The Rockies are monumentally, laughably, historically bad

Washington Post

6 days ago

The Colorado Rockies aren't just losing; they're making history. With nearly a third of the season gone, they've failed to win a single series, endured repeated blowouts and plummeted to the bottom of the majors in a host of statistical categories. A once-proud franchise finds itself spiraling toward an unprecedented level of failure. The Rockies entered the weekend with a 9-47 record — a full nine games behind baseball's next worst team, the Chicago White Sox, who are themselves just a few months removed from setting baseball's modern record for futility. So as the losses pile up and the numbers grow more alarming, we need to start asking: Could the 2025 Rockies be the new worst team in modern MLB history?
How bad has it been so far? Whether you look at traditional stats or advanced metrics, it's been unbelievably grim. Entering Friday's games, the Rockies were averaging just 3.2 runs per game, the lowest output in baseball. Their on-base plus slugging percentage stood at .638, 29 percent below average, and they had hit only 46 home runs, tying them for third fewest in baseball. Most dramatically, the Rockies were creating runs at a rate 36 percent below the league average (64 weighted runs created plus, or WRC) after adjusting for league and park effects. If that holds, it would be the worst mark in MLB since 1948, per FanGraphs.
Outside a few top performers, the lineup struggles with consistency and plate discipline, leading to frequent strikeouts (27 percent of plate appearances, the second highest rate in baseball, per FanGraphs) and missed scoring opportunities. That's fueled Colorado's run differential of minus-175, nearly double that of the next-worst team. That projects to a season-ending differential of minus-532, which would shatter the modern MLB record of minus-349 set by the 1932 Boston Red Sox. The White Sox finished with a run differential of minus-306 last season.
Colorado's pitching staff has matched its hitters in woe. Through Thursday, the Rockies' earned run average sat at 5.55, the highest in baseball, and they were allowing an average of more than six runs per game. Opposing hitters had scored almost 98 more runs than we would expect based on the number of men on base and outs remaining in the inning, and the staff had the lowest strikeout rate (17 percent) in the league.
Injuries have only made things worse. Ryan Feltner is recovering from back spasms, Chase Dollander is sidelined with arm issues, Austin Gomber is on the 60-day injured list with a shoulder injury and reliever Ryan Criswell is out for the year after Tommy John surgery.
Even the healthy pitchers have struggled. Starters Kyle Freeland (0-7), Germán Márquez (1-7) and Antonio Senzatela (1-9) all have bloated earned run averages (each is over 5.80; the league average is 3.96), while rookie Carson Palmquist has an ERA near 9.00. A few bright spots exist in the bullpen but the Rockies' lack of depth, poor performance and bad luck with injuries have made their pitching staff a disaster.
Defensively? You can probably guess. The Rockies had committed 47 errors through Thursday, the most in MLB, and were easily leading the league in throwing errors (28, six more than any other team). They had the league's third-worst defensive runs saved (-34), a metric from FanGraphs that quantifies how many runs a player saved or cost his team defensively compared to an average player at his position. (It incorporates range, throwing, double plays and other factors to evaluate overall defensive performance using detailed play-by-play data.)
The overall result is nine wins through 56 games, the worst start by win rate in the modern era, surpassing the 1904 Washington Senators' 9-44-3 showing. Not only have the Rockies yet to win a single series; they have been swept in nine of them, including a four-game sweep by the Philadelphia Phillies earlier this month. Their .161 winning percentage has them on pace for a 26-136 season, which would surpass the White Sox's modern record of 121 losses.
By my estimate, in fact, the Rockies have a 68 percent chance of losing at least 122 games. I got to that number using this year's BaseRuns (found at FanGraphs) and the Log5 formula. BaseRuns is a way to estimate how many runs a team should score and allow, based on what actually happened on the field — like hits, walks and outs — rather than the order those events happened in. It removes luck and timing to give a clearer picture of team performance. From those expected runs scored and allowed, we can calculate a more accurate win rate than just by looking at wins and losses.
Using this win rate in the Log5 formula for head-to-head matchups helps us better predict how a team is likely to perform moving forward. (The Log5 formula was created by baseball analytics legend Bill James and is useful because it adjusts for the strength of both teams — and incorporates home-field advantage — making it more accurate than just forecasting based on overall record or past matchups.) These two tools can be used together to simulate the rest of the Rockies' season 10,000 times, with the results recorded for each simulation.
If the Rockies do indeed achieve that dubious history, the appearance of the two worst MLB teams in a century in back-to-back seasons wouldn't be random or coincidental. It's instead the result of structural incentives in the draft, front office strategy and the economic disparity baked into modern baseball. Richer, smarter teams have widened the gap with the have-nots through elite scouting, player development and analytics infrastructure — in addition to piles of money. This growing imbalance is visible in the numbers; at this point, the 2025 season has the widest gap between MLB's best and worst teams in modern history, and the highest standard deviation of win percentage since the 1800s.
In other words, these miserable teams aren't isolated failures, they're the predictable outcome of a system that quietly enables extreme losing. Teams with the worst records gain access to the highest draft picks and often receive extra selections through competitive balance rounds. These struggling clubs can then stockpile cost-controlled young players. Revenue sharing cushions financial losses for noncompetitive franchises, and the absence of a salary floor makes tanking less punitive than in other sports. Although that can't fully explain the misery of the 2024 White Sox and 2025 Rockies, until MLB addresses the underlying financial and competitive dynamics, it's likely we will continue to see teams challenge the sport's records for futility.