It always meant to augment or supplement (income) through great effort or extra work or a second job, until the last 20 years or so or misuse made the dictionaries reluctantly accommodate it’s misuse. The most flexible reading, which is almost an inversion: 4. eke out – obtain with difficulty; “He eked out some information from the archives” was added later because of it’s general misuse usually in sports writing referring to a situation of “barely winning with difficulty.”

It’s basically peer pressure and fear that caused this misuse to spread. A fear of not wanting to use the more accurate words that the writer is thinking, which is “squeeze out” or even “squeak out” a win, because these words don’t seem thoughtful or macho, or open the writer up to sex jokes or other snarky language.

It’s OK to say “narrowly win” or “barely win” or some other choice of words. Practice it. After a while, you won’t feel the need to write “eke out,” unless you really mean it.

No one’s suggesting this roster should be great offensively, but there’s enough talent to be around league average. And if they were, we’d be running away with the division with the pitching staff we have.