While preparing for our annual fantasy league, the strongest unexpected impression I got, from examining 30 Major League teams … was how bad so many of them are.

Baseball has a half-dozen no-hope teams right out of the gate. And probably closer to a dozen.

And I am not thinking of 78-84 bad.

I’m thinking 70-92 bad, and perhaps worse.

What is going on here?

My theory is that baseball is taking a cue from basketball, and deciding that the only thing worse than being horrible is being mediocre. Better to trade off your remaining assets for draft picks and prospects and be awful, with the hope of contending for the playoffs in a couple of years with a young and cheap team.

A recent example of a team that made this work was the Houston Astros.

In 2010, they were 76-86, out of the playoffs for the fifth consecutive season. Instead of trying to fix what they had, after a poor start in 2011 they blew up the team. They lost 106 games, 107 and 111 games in the three seasons through 2013, one of the worst three-year runs in baseball history.

But in 2014, boasting youngsters Jose Altuve and George Springer, they were 72-90. And last year they added youngsters Carlos Correa, Jake Marisnick and Lance McCullers. They jumped to 86-76 and made the playoffs.

It seems a bunch of MLB teams would like to follow that path. But in the meantime, we have some really bad clubs cluttering up the 2016 season.

Let’s look at this batch of losers, ranking 10 of them from bad to worst.

10. Los Angeles Angels. In the 11 seasons since 2002, when the Angels won their only World Series championship, they had only three losing seasons. But this is a team of Mike Trout, Garrett Richards and not much else. Albert Pujols, 36, is in the decline phase the Angels knew was coming when they gave him that 10-year, $240-million contract before the 2012 season. He had 40 homers last season but an on-base percentage of .307, 90 points off his career average. Starters include C.J. Cron, Yunel Escobar, Johnny Giovotella and Daniel Nava. Figure them for 76-86, at best.

9. Minnesota Twins. They were 83-79 a year ago, but this is the season when their pathetic pitching goes to pieces. Phil Hughes as an ace? Please. Joe Mauer is a shadow of what he was, taking up space at first base, and Kurt Suzuki is a replace-level catcher. Miguel Sano, Brian Dozier and rookie Byron Buxton should hit enough to hold the decline to 76-86, for now.

8. Baltimore Orioles. An 81-81 season a year ago is about to go south fairly vigorously. Like the Twins, they can hit the ball, with Chris Davis and Manny Machado leading the way, but their pitching is even more dire than the Twins’. And they have some relics/stiffs they plan to play regularly, like J.J. Hardy and Joey Rickard, and three-true-outcomes star Mark Trumbo is a looming disaster in right field. Let’s say 75-87.

7. San Diego Padres. We begin to reach the true no-hopers. The Padres have a genius for being irrelevant as well as unrecognizable. Their best-known players are aging guys with ridiculous contracts, Melvin Upton ($75m) and Matt Kemp ($160m). The infield includes non-entities Cory Spangenberg, Yangervis Solarte and nearly washed up Alexei Ramirez. Their rotation goes two-deep, maybe, if we overlook James Shields’s slide. Another year of nothingness in San Diego should end up 73-89, at best.

6. Oakland Athletics. They were the worst team in the American League last year, at 68-94, and Billy Beane’s penchant for making something out of nothing seems to be fading. The infield is a mass of replacement-level dross, and the outfield is little better, with J.J. Reddick perhaps the best guy out there. Catcher Stephen Vogt had a fine half season last year, but they still lost six games out of every 10. The pitching staff has Sonny Gray as the ace, and he is giving up an “already peaked” vibe. The rest are mostly rejects and washouts. They will not be as bad as last year, but hardly any better. Let’s put them at 70-92.

5. Colorado Rockies. A 68-94 finish is about what we expected from the 2015 Rocks, who seem to have no ideas about how to get people out in mile-high Coors Field. Some really fine hitting, and not all of it dependent on Coors, will be delivered by Nolan Arenado and George Blackmon, and maybe D.J. LeMahieu, but why is a team that lost 94 games last year and 96 the year before still holding on to Carlos Gonzalez? The issue is pitching, the worst in MLB. You don’t want any of their starting pitchers on your fantasy team, and you ought to think twice or thrice about their relievers, too. They Rockies hemorrhaged 844 runs last year, worst in the bigs. Those may soon be remembered as the good old days. Let’s put them down for another 68-94.

4. Milwaukee Brewers. Bad pitching is the tie that binds these awful teams, and the Brewers are right there, following a 68-94 season. They had hope for midseason call-up Taylor Jungmann, who started well and then was torched regularly the final weeks of the season. The ace is Wily Peralta and their closer, Will Smith, wrecked his knee while tying his shoe. Drug-tainted Ryan Braun and his declining numbers are still haunting the outfield. Jonathan Lucroy is a decent catcher who probably should be flipped for prospects but the rest are mediocrities, at best. Let’s leave them treading water with another 68-94 season, with many of the “68” coming against the bottom three.

3. Cincinnati Reds. It is sad that a fine baseball town like Cincinnati must be subjected to this team, 68-94 last year and potentially worse this time around. The lineup is a monument to second-tier journeymen, like Zack Cozart and Anthony Duvall. Jay Bruce hits some home runs, but that is about the extent of his production. Joey Votto, easily their best-known player, seems eager to test, year after year, the question “what if a guy walked 200 times in a season” when they need him to put the ball in the seats or at least in the gaps. Brandon Phillips is done, Billy Hamilton can steal second but can rarely get to first — and the pitching is worse than the hitting. Raisel Iglesias is the great young hope. With Todd Frazier gone, this team is likely to be even worse, like 64-98 worse.

2. Atlanta Braves. Now we get to the desperate race to the bottom, one that reminds us a bit of this season’s Los Angeles Lakers versus the Philadelphia 76ers. Remember when the Braves ran off 14 winning season in 15 years, through 2005? Neither do Braves fans. This is a team that cleared out everyone who could play except Freddie Freeman, who must wonder whom he offended during a 67-95 season last year. How do the Braves suck? Let me count the ways. They have at least four regulars who ought to be out of baseball in the next year or two — A.J. Pierzynski, Nick Markakis, Erick Aybar and Hector Olivera, all of them on the wrong side of 30. Julio Teheran is their ace, but the rest of the rotation is a sort of an ad hoc committee of Triple-A dreck, as is their closer situation. This is a bad team that can’t even get right the concept of “if we are going to lose, let’s lose with young guys who might get better”. Let’s put them down for 64-98. Look for a “free Freddie Freeman” campaign to be under way by May.

1. Philadelphia Phillies. For much of their history, they were a bad team (they own the record for most defeats, all-time, at 10,650), and after winning 102 games as recently as 2011, they have gone to pieces. They had to win the final game of the 2015 season to avoid 100 defeats, at 63-99. This is a team of sub-replacement-level players, a function of the franchise sticking far too long with the core of their heyday, guys like Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Shane Victorino, Ryan Howard and  Carlos Ruiz (the latter two still remain), who were allowed to progress well into their 30s in red pinstripes. Reinforcements from below seem nowhere near ready, and their best player is Maikel Franco, who would be Just Another Guy on 25 MLB teams. You don’t want any of their pitchers, and the Phillies probably don’t either. They are awful, and figure to remain that way for a couple of years, at best. Let’s peg them for triple-digit defeats this time, at 60-102.

But they will get the first pick, again, in the 2016 free-agent draft.