Seattle's 2-Sport Heartbreak Ranked 39th Since 1950, and That's Actually the Good News

You want to know what's worse than watching your city's teams collapse? Finding out your city's teams didn't even collapse hard enough to make the highlight reel of failure.

That's the reality for any fan living through a year where all your squads whiff at once. A data analyst ran the numbers and ranked every four-sport city's worst seasons since 1950, measuring how each team finished relative to its league. The math is brutal but fair: a 29th-place finish in baseball (out of 30 teams) counts the same as a 29th-place finish in football (out of 32), so we're comparing apples to apples across all four major sports.

The Math Behind the Misery

Here's how it works. You take one team per sport from each city. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Atlanta are the only true four-sport towns. Everything else gets ranked by how badly they all bombed together in a single calendar year.

The 2025 Washington DC collapse looked historic on the surface. The Nationals went 66-96. The Commanders limped to 5-12 after riding high on a Conference Championship run in 2024. The Wizards finished 17-65. Even the Capitals, despite posting a winning 43-30 record, missed the playoffs for the first time since 2023. Four teams, zero playoffs. But when you run the actual percentile rankings? DC ranks 39th worst since 1950. Not top-five bad. Not even close.

When a City Actually Fell Apart

Detroit owns the crown. Rank them in 2019 and 2020 and the numbers are apocalyptic. Neither the Tigers nor the Pistons had any shot at the postseason during that two-year stretch. Rank 3 and Rank 1. COVID shortened some seasons, which at least ended the suffering faster, but those years were historically brutal for Motor City fans.

New York in 2017 was also a bloodbath. The Mets, Giants, and Rangers combined in various configurations to create six different variations of four-sport hell, with rankings ranging from 18th to 38th worst. Chicago's suffering was spread across three straight years (2022, 2023, 2024 ranked 17th, 27th, and 34th), which explains why fans nearly lost it when the Bears beat the Packers recently. It wasn't just a divisional win. It was the first thing worth celebrating in years.

So if you're a DC fan feeling like you got robbed? You actually didn't have it that bad this year. Look back at 2023 instead. That was rough. But 2025? That's just another year for a four-sport city that can't get out of its own way.

This article was created with AI assistance and reviewed by Seattle On Tap editorial staff. Always verify information with official team sources.