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David Schoenfield
Last year’s MLB Aggrieved Fan Index was such a big hit that we’re back with an encore performance. Why quit a good thing when the fans demand a sequel? And, oh, how things have changed in a calendar year.
As we neared the end of 2024, the Toronto Blue Jays — coming off a 74-88 season, having lost out on Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto as free agents and with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. seemingly on his way out of town — came in at No. 5 on our index. But this year, they signed Guerrero to a $500 million extension, won the division and came within two outs of winning the World Series. Now, Toronto is suddenly a destination, the Jays are all-in for 2026, and the fans are happy once again.
The Seattle Mariners ranked No. 2 in last year’s index, and many thought they should have been No. 1. Their pain was of a different sort: the pain of falling just short of making the playoffs in 2023 and 2024, and not making that one extra move needed to get over the hump. Well, 60 home runs will change a lot. Cal Raleigh‘s monster season plus an epic run in September (17 wins in 18 games) put the Mariners back in the playoffs and propelled them all the way to ALCS, where they came within eight outs of reaching the first World Series in franchise history. The future looks bright.
While the Blue Jays and Mariners drop out of the top 10, other fan bases remain as aggrieved as ever. The primary criteria for fans who have the right to be frustrated as the year comes to an end: expectations heading into the 2025 season, the team’s 2025 performance, what they’ve done so far this offseason and any other extenuating circumstances we might consider.
Let’s count it down.
2024 ranking: Not ranked
Yes, the Red Sox returned to the postseason for the first time since 2021, but the franchise hasn’t yet made it back to the heights of 2016 to 2018, when it capped off a terrific three-year run with a World Series title (not coincidentally, Boston also led the majors in payroll in 2018). Indeed, that was the last time the Red Sox won the AL East — and that’s unacceptable for the Fenway Faithful. Owner John Henry has remained steadfast in keeping his payroll in line, although the Red Sox did at least climb back into the top 10 payrolls in 2025 after falling out in 2023 and 2024.
The front office under Craig Breslow has made some excellent moves, such as trading for Garrett Crochet and signing Roman Anthony to an eight-year contract. But the Rafael Devers trade was controversial, since it was primarily viewed as a salary dump of a good hitter in his prime. We’ll see if the Red Sox reinvest those savings this offseason. The money wasn’t for Kyle Schwarber or Pete Alonso, two players they went after who signed elsewhere before the Red Sox traded for Willson Contreras this week.
Bottom line: The Red Sox have won just one playoff series in seven years. That’s not going to fly in Beantown.
2024 ranking: Not ranked
Wait, the Reds made the playoffs in a full season for the first time since 2013 and climbed into the rankings? Sounds a little harsh. Maybe it is. However, let’s not get too worked up over an 83-79 season. Sure, it won the Reds a wild card, but their 2025 campaign wasn’t really any different in quality than when they went 82-80 in 2023 or 83-79 in 2021. The Reds still haven’t played a home playoff game since losing Game 5 of the 2012 NLDS. They haven’t won a playoff series since 1995. That’s 30 years of pent-up frustration that getting hammered by the Los Angeles Dodgers in two wild-card games didn’t alleviate.
But a bigger boiling point was reached this offseason. Schwarber was the absolute perfect fit for the Reds in free agency: They’re desperate for power, and Schwarber grew up in Ohio rooting for his hometown team. The Reds rarely venture into free agency, especially in the big-boy market, but they went after Schwarber, who even said he was “impressed” with their presentation. In the end, the offer fell short as Schwarber returned to the Phillies.
The kicker: Apparently, the money the Reds offered Schwarber won’t go somewhere else, as reports suggested ownership was only willing to pay Schwarber under the belief he would sell tickets. As my colleague Brad Doolittle wrote, “The Reds need to do something — and they need to stop making excuses for why they don’t.”
Instead, the possible scenario for the rest of the postseason, as the Blog Red Machine put it: “Reds fans fearing the same old bargain-bin disaster.”
2024 ranking: Not ranked
The Orioles were in the running for the top spot on this list until they signed Alonso to a five-year, $155 million contract, making him the first big free agent splash since David Rubenstein finalized his purchase of the Orioles in August 2024. Rubenstein’s first full season as owner was a disaster: He made no big moves in the 2024-25 offseason while immediately complaining that MLB needs a salary cap, and then the team went on to collapse on the field, finishing 75-87 and in last place just two years after winning 101 games.
The Alonso signing at least relieves some of the concerns that Rubenstein isn’t willing to spend what’s necessary for the Orioles to compete in the tough AL East. But it’s also not a fix to the lack of depth in the starting rotation. The Orioles signed closer Ryan Helsley to replace the injured Felix Bautista, although Helsey’s second-half fade — possibly due to tipping pitches — hardly makes him a sure thing. Meanwhile, Orioles fans still await the franchise’s first World Series appearance since 1983. Only Brewers, Pirates and Mariners fans have waited longer.
2024 ranking: No. 8
The Rockies had no expectations for 2025, and yet they managed to descend to depths below even those. They were, frankly, the worst team in modern MLB history, outscored by an unfathomable 424 runs. No fan base should have to endure such ineptitude. Remarkably, the fans are still showing up at a decent clip: 2.4 million of them in 2025, although that’s a decline from 3.0 million in 2018, the team’s last playoff appearance.
The terrible season — on the heels of many bad seasons — finally led to a front office makeover, with former major league executive Paul DePodesta getting the top baseball job and Josh Byrnes, who has worked in the Dodgers’ front office since 2014, hired as the general manager. It was smart for the Monfort family to finally go outside the organization, as Bill Schmidt and Jeff Bridich, the two previous GMs, were both hired from within. It will take time to create a whole new organization, from scouting to player development to improved analytics. Rockies fans will need more patience.
2024 ranking: Not ranked
One thing about the Giants: They’re consistent. The past four seasons they’ve gone 81-81, 79-83, 80-82 and 81-81, respectively. Being stuck in neutral creates its own kind of fan frustration. They’ve made the playoffs once in the past nine seasons, the miracle season of 2021 that now stands out as maybe one of the biggest flukes in MLB history. This past season was also kind of strange. In his first season as president of baseball operations, Buster Posey made the big Devers trade in June, but then dealt Tyler Rogers, Camilo Doval and Mike Yastrzemski at the trade deadline.
The Giants ended up missing the playoffs by two games. Do they make it if they keep those guys?
This offseason raises the same concerns the Giants always seem to face: Even with the addition of Devers, they need another middle-of-the-order hitter; the rotation always feels one good starter short; the outfield always needs one more productive hitter; and now the bullpen needs a makeover with Rogers and Doval gone and Randy Rodriguez out after Tommy John surgery. Kyle Tucker or Cody Bellinger fit the Giants’ needs, but their fans have heard this story before, as the team always seems unable to reel in one of the top free agents.
2024 ranking: No. 9
Cardinals fans are not used to this. From 2000 to 2022, only the Yankees and Dodgers won more games. The Cardinals made the playoffs 17 times, won two World Series and suffered just one losing season. Walk around St. Louis, it was a sea of red clothing. The Cardinals drew more than 3 million fans every non-COVID season from 1998 to 2023, except for 2003, when it dipped all the way to … 2.9 million. Attendance in 2024? 2.88 million. And in 2025? 2.25 million.
That’s all you need to know about the level of frustration among Cardinals fans. The question for our purposes: Are Cardinals fans’ expectations so high that they’re putting themselves in this position of deserving this ranking? After all, their stretch of two-plus decades of winning is in the recent past. Put it this way: If this were the Yankees or Dodgers struggling to finish .500, this level of aggrievement would be understandable — and Cardinals fans (and the organization) have always acted like they were on that same level, one of the preeminent organizations in the sport. That is no longer the case.
It’s a perilous time for the franchise, and Cardinals fans can sense that.
2024 ranking: No. 1
It never ends for the Angels. Let’s see what happened in 2025:
• A 10th consecutive losing season.
• The third-worst run differential in the majors and worst in the American League.
• Manager Ron Washington had to step down in June due to health concerns.
• Yusei Kikuchi publicly complained about the lack of air conditioning in the team’s weight room. (At least the Angels then posted a job for an HVAC technician.)
• The Angels finished last in the majors with a .225 batting average and first in strikeouts.
• The bullpen was one of the worst in Angels history.
• The ongoing Tyler Skaggs trial.
• The ongoing Anthony Rendon saga. He didn’t play at all in 2025 and is still owed $38.5 million in the final year of his contract, so there will be some sort of buyout. Don’t expect a goodbye ceremony.
Bottom line: The Angels drop in the rankings only because this chaos is now the norm. As one Reddit user put it: “This team has zero chemistry, a losing culture, a clueless GM, a terrible owner, way below average MLB pitching, zero grit, zero leadership.”
2024 ranking: No. 6
Let’s be honest here: As long as Bob Nutting owns the team, the Pirates are likely to be permanently entrenched on this list. They finished this past season with a 71-91 record — worse than the 76-86 seasons in 2023 and 2024. This was thanks to one of the most putrid offenses in franchise history … or at least since 2022. We will avoid the gory details. Things are so sour in Pittsburgh that at last year’s offseason fan fest, fans began chanting “Sell the team!” during a Q&A. Nutting wasn’t even in attendance.
This offseason, the Pirates supposedly made strong offers to Schwarber and Josh Naylor. Congratulations. Is there a participation trophy for that? Look, the Pirates’ path to success isn’t going to be relying on signing free agents. It’s all about player development — and that’s where they have failed over the past decade. Maybe that tide is turning. Paul Skenes fell into their hands and Konnor Griffin is now the top prospect in baseball. That’s going to be one of the most exciting duos in baseball the next five years. Let’s see if the Pirates can build a winner around them — before Skenes is traded or heads off into free agency.
2024 ranking: Not ranked
The Mets have packed a decade’s worth of angst into just the past five months. Back on July 31, they were in first place in the NL East. They had made a bunch of trades to improve the bullpen. Over the final two months, Juan Soto produced an OPS over 1.000. Pete Alonso hit .297 with 16 home runs and 45 RBIs. Nolan McLean came up from the minors and delivered a 2.06 ERA in eight starts.
They collapsed anyway — in epic Mets fashion. They went 21-32 the final two months and missed the playoffs.
Then came the offseason. They traded Brandon Nimmo. Then, Edwin Diaz signed with the Dodgers followed by Alonso with the Baltimore Orioles. All longtime Mets since at least 2019, arguably the three most popular players on the team — all gone.
And how have Mets fans handled this?
Rationally? Umm …
Look, the Steve Cohen era — he bought the Mets after the 2020 season — has been a roller coaster of enormous payrolls and emotional torture. “If I don’t win a World Series in the next three to five years — I would like to make it sooner — then obviously I would consider that slightly disappointing,” he said at his introductory news conference. “I’m not in this to be mediocre.”
Oops.
As painful as the early results of this offseason have been for the fans, betting on Alonso, Nimmo and Diaz playing well into their mid-30s was not a clear path to get the Mets over the top. But until they do something bigger this offseason, Mets fans will remain completely reasonable and patient.
2024 ranking: No. 4
Let’s turn back the clock to 2019. The Twins won 101 games, smashing an MLB-record 307 home runs, on their way to the AL Central title. Then consider where the rest of the division was. The Kansas City Royals were a mess. The Detroit Tigers were a bigger mess. The Chicago White Sox had lost 89 games. Cleveland was about to embark on a rebuild of sorts, trading away stars such as Francisco Lindor, Trevor Bauer and Corey Kluber.
The Twins had the most talent in the division. They should have dominated the AL Central the next six years. But that didn’t happen. Oh, they won the division in 2020 and again in 2023, but the Twins have instead seen an undermanned Cleveland team win the division the past two years, a Tigers team with plenty of holes make the playoffs the past two seasons and even the Royals win a wild card out of nowhere in 2024.
Then came the 2025 trade deadline, when the Twins had a historic sell-off, dealing away 11 players in a series of moves that stunned the baseball industry.
“It’s a hard pill to swallow, but maybe a reset was needed,” catcher Ryan Jeffers said at the time. “We were curious to see how far the front office would go, and they decided to go really far.”
The Twins went 19-35 the final two months and attendance fell to 1.77 million, the lowest full-season figure for the franchise since 2000. In the midst of this, the Pohlad family, which has owned the Twins since 1984 and had been exploring a sale, took the team off the market in August — crushing the hopes of Twins fans everywhere.
If there’s a glimmer of good news for a franchise that has just one playoff series win since 2002 (a wild-card series win in 2023) and last appeared in the World Series in 1991, it’s that the Twins will apparently hold on to Joe Ryan, Pablo Lopez and Byron Buxton, despite trade rumors at the beginning of the offseason.
Hey, in the AL Central, anything is possible. Maybe the Twins find a way to get off this list next year.
