30 MLB Teams in 30 Posts: #26

The Red Sox ended up nearly at the bottom of my rankings this year due in part to their cheating scandal.  By that logic, you would think that the Houston Astros would also have made it into my bottom five but for reasons that I'll explain when I get to Houston, they avoided the bottom.  Instead, the last member of the bottom five in MLB right now is none other than the reigning world champs.

#26:  Washington Nationals (2019 Rank:  #27)

If I had to guess, I'd say it's actually fairly rare for a team (other than my favorite team) to win the World Series one year and then actually move up in my rankings the next year.  I tend to root for underdogs typically and being the reigning world champs is the exact opposite of being an underdog.  

I guess in this case the Nationals can thank Boston for cheating since in 2019 it was the Red Sox which held the #26 spot in my rankings.  I will say this about the Nationals, I kind of appreciate their A+ trolling level when it comes to Twitter (and mostly all at Bryce Harper's expense).  

My disdain for Washington is due to a few reasons:

• First, I felt they did Dusty Baker wrong in how they treated him.  It's good to see Dusty get another chance with Houston even if it's basically the Astros just using Dusty for a year or so.
• Second, I don't generally like many of Washington's players including the likes of Harper and Strasburg.  
• Third, no ballpark experience has even been as bad for me as one time when I visited Washington.  I ended up having to pay $40 for parking and I've never really forgiven the club for that.
• Finally, up until the 2019 playoffs it was actually kind of fun watching Washington flame out in the postseason year after year.  Now that they finally broke through and won a playoff series (never mind the World Series), that curse is lifted which is kind of a bummer.

Now that I've unveiled my bottom five teams in MLB it's interesting (to me at least) that the bottom five was unchanged from last year other than a slight reordering of the teams.  I can say that the next bunch of teams will vary more wildly from what I had ranked last year!

2020 Rankings:

#30:  New York Yankees

#29:  Boston Red Sox

#28:  St. Louis Cardinals

#27:  San Francisco Giants

#26:  Washington Nationals

#25:  ??

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