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Analysis: How COVID Changed the Way Bad Baseball Teams Approach Losing

Ray Ratto

2h ago· 5 min readenOpinion

Summary

This opinion piece argues that COVID-era dynamics have allowed bad Major League Baseball teams to embrace being spectacularly awful, but suggests this trend may be ending as 2026 approaches. The article uses sarcastic and provocative language to critique the state of poorly performing baseball teams and their strategies for bottoming out.

Source

DefectorAnalysis: How COVID Changed the Way Bad Baseball Teams Approach Losingdefector.com

Key quotes

· 3 pulled

Among the things COVID does not get credited for—and think of the last time you read that sentence—is the way it has helped bad baseball teams perfect the art of bottoming out.

Since the pandemic made us more comfortable with the idea of catastrophes, we have seen the worst teams in the majors choose to be, or accidentally become, spectacularly awful.

on the theory that if you're going to stink, be a sewage plant explosion, 2026 is shaping up to be a particularly meh year.

Snippet from the RSS feed

Among the things COVID does not get credited for—and think of the last time you read that sentence—is the way it has helped bad baseball teams perfect the art of bottoming out. Since the pandemic made us more comfortable with the idea of catastrophes, we

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