It was probably inevitable after their 2016 championship, but the lovable losers have become hateable.

At least according to the online betting site casinoinsider.com, which says it used data from Twitter to suggest the Cubs are second only to the Yankees among baseball teams America loves to hate.

The site created a map of all 50 states, using data that tracked more than 10,000 tweets that mentioned hating a specific team. The Yankees were the most hated team in 28 states, with the Cubs a distant second with eight states.

Some of the Cubs-hating states were obvious, such as Missouri and Wisconsin, the home of the Cardinals and Brewers. Others were head-scratchers, including Iowa, Indiana, Arkansas, Nevada, Wyoming and South Dakota.

South Dakota?

The Yankees and Cubs are also two of the most popular teams in baseball, as evidenced by the big crowds they draw on the road and the appearances they make on ESPN and Fox.

And the other “hateable” teams — the Dodgers (five states), Cardinals and Mets (four apiece) and Red Sox (one ) — are also very popular.

Haters gonna hate, as the kids say, and winning breeds contempt.

It was unthinkable only a few years ago that the Cubs would be lumped in with a team as nationally loathed as the Yankees, who were traditionally disliked because of their bombastic owner, George Steinbrenner, and their unlimited payrolls that bought championships.

But the Cubs are second in payroll now and in the midst of a five-year stretch of winning that’s unprecedented in franchise history. Just as the Red Sox did in 2004, the Cubs lost their status as perennial underdogs when they ended their championship drought in ’16.

Now they’re just another big-market behemoth, albeit in an iconic ballpark.

In spring training 2018, I asked manager Joe Maddon if the Cubs were in danger of becoming as hateable as the Yankees and Red Sox.

“In a perverse way, isn’t that high praise?” he said. “I’m not (worried). Listen, it’s an interesting concept. Here’s the thing about us, though — and I’m not trying to separate us from them or saying we’re better. I think our guys are very appealing.”

Maddon immediately mentioned Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo, who were then part of an MLB promotional campaign, running the fictional company “Bryzzo.”

“Javy (Baez)? People love Javy for the way he plays and things he does,” Maddon continued. “Addison (Russell), (Kyle) Schwarber, (Willson) Contreras … I could keep going down the list. I think our guys are likable, so it’s hard to wear the black hat. Part of our attraction is we’re good, with some really good guys.”

Russell obviously lost some fans after his domestic violence incident, and some members of the Ricketts family that own the team are polarizing because of their involvement in right-wing politics.

But the overall popularity of Cubs players was evident in the recent All-Star voting, where in which Baez and Contreras were voted in as starters for the second straight year and Rizzo, Schwarber, Jason Heyward and Albert Almora Jr. were finalists at their positions.

Individually, it’s still a very likeable bunch, though you could get an argument from Yasiel Puig and Tyler Flowers, two opposing players who got into recent confrontations with Pedro Strop and Contreras.

“Listen, our guys get it,” Maddon said last year. “We just don’t have black hat kind of guys.”

That’s not what they say on the South Side, where everyone on the Cubs wears a black hat. But that’s another story, as we’ll see when the crosstown rivals meet Saturday and Sunday at White Sox Park.

Perhaps the Cubs will become less hateable if they go back to their losing ways.

And if their prolonged stretch of sub-.500 ball continues into the second half, that’s a distinct possibility.