It's hard to compare across eras in any sport, but it would be ludicrous to try to argue whether the 1899 Cleveland Spiders or the 2018 Baltimore Orioles were a worse team. As far as winning percentage is concerned, 32 of the 35 worst seasons in MLB history happened before 1900, and 23 of those teams played 65 or fewer games.

Rather than try to cherry-pick a couple of the especially terrible teams from the pre-World Series history of the sport and then interweave them with sad seasons from the 1900s and 2000s, we're just going to briefly address our "top" four of those teams before working through a top 10 from the 12 most recent decades.

4. 1883 Philadelphia Quakers (17-81): One of baseball's oldest franchises didn't get out to a great start. Seven years before changing their name to the Phillies, the Quakers' inaugural season was a disaster. If you think general managers are quick to make coaching changes now, be sure to note the Quakers fired their manager (Bob Ferguson) 17 games into franchise history. They also went 0-14 against the Boston Beaneaters and were outscored 169-67 in those games.

3. 1890 Pittsburgh Alleghenys (23-113): A 4-2 start to the season proved to be fool's gold, as the Alleghenys had a winning percentage of .146 the rest of the way. From Aug. 12 through Sept. 2, they lost 23 consecutive games, including one stretch of nine losses in six days thanks to two double-headers and a triple-header. But as far as Baseball Reference is concerned, their two most valuable players were named Doggie Miller and Phenomenal Smith, so that's cool.

2. 1889 Louisville Colonels (27-111): A 26-game losing streak "highlighted" a campaign that included a manager getting fired after 10 games and an owner who fined his team relentlessly and refused to pay the players before surrendering the franchise in July. Wish there was a 30 for 30 doc on this mess.

1. 1899 Cleveland Spiders (20-134): No team that played at least 12 games has ever gone winless, but the Spiders gave it the ol' college try. Not only did they have a full-season winning percentage of .130, but their best head-to-head winning percentage against an opponent was .286—4-10 against both the Washington Senators and the Louisville Colonels. They finished 84 games back of first place with a run differential of minus-723. They had six separate losing streaks of at least 10 games, topping out at 24.