Rockies by the numbers: 9 stats that tell the story of a historically woeful season

New York Times

29-05-2025

The Colorado Rockies lost again on Wednesday. It was their sixth straight loss, 2-1 on the road against the Chicago Cubs, and their 22nd loss since May 2. They've won only three times in that span, continuing a trajectory that has them on pace to far exceed last year's Chicago White Sox for the worst season in modern baseball history.
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At 9-47, the Rockies are easily the worst team in baseball, and there's little to suggest it's a fluke. Based on their runs scored and allowed, Baseball-Reference calculates that they should be slightly better — 12 wins instead of nine — but the Rockies' league-worst run differential is twice as bad as the third-worst Athletics, and both their staff ERA (30th) and runs per game (29th) rank at or near the bottom of the league.
Two months into the season, it's difficult to overstate just how awful the Rockies have been, but we've come up with nine numbers — one for each of their wins — that help tell the story of a historically bad team.
The Rockies left spring training with some sense of optimism. Their clubhouse was loose and hopeful on Opening Day, and a narrow walk-off loss in the season opener was followed immediately by a good one-run win in Game 2. But those were the only two games in which the Rockies have used their preferred lineup. Brenton Doyle, Ezequiel Tovar, Ryan McMahon and Kris Bryant were the top four hitters on Opening Day, and those four have not played together in that order since April 8. Bryant and Tovar have missed considerable time due to injury, Jordan Beck has supplanted Doyle in the leadoff spot, and McMahon — despite below-average offensive numbers — has become the go-to cleanup hitter. Beck, Tovar and catcher/DH Hunter Goodman are the regular top three hitters these days. They're also the only Rockies hitters with an above-average OPS+.
According to FanGraphs, four individual Rockies position players have a positive WAR this season, but the team as a whole has generated a positive WAR at only two positions: third base and left field. Third base has been driven by Rockies mainstay McMahon, who's been a below-average hitter (81 wRC+) but a strong defender. Left field is the product of Beck's second-year breakout (from a minus-1.0 fWAR last year to 0.9 this year). Otherwise, the Rockies are awash in performances that could, in theory, be replicated or even improved by calling up someone from Triple-A. (Though, the fact Tovar is healthy again should push shortstop into positive WAR territory in the relatively near future.)
This is a low number by any standard — only the Pirates have scored fewer runs than the Rockies this season — but it's shockingly low for a team that plays half its games at notoriously hitter-friendly Coors Field. In their 33-year history, the Rockies have never scored fewer than 4.21 runs per game, and even that low-water mark is relatively new (set last season). Before 2023, the Rockies had only once averaged fewer than 4.54 runs per game, and in more than half of their seasons, the Rockies have averaged at least 4.8. In their first three decades (from 1993 to 2022), the Rockies scored the most runs in the National League (only the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox scored more in all of baseball), but in the past three seasons, only four teams have scored fewer runs than the Rockies.
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The Rockies have two games remaining in the month of May. They're tough matchups — Friday and Saturday on the road against the New York Mets — but they represent two chances to push their season win total into double digits while accumulating five wins in May. So far, they've won only four in May after winning just four in April. The Rockies became only the third team since 2000 to win fewer than five games in April, and they're so far the only team in the 2000s to win only four games in May. Last year's White Sox set a modern record for losses in a season, but even they managed to win 15 games by the end of May and had at least six wins in four of six months. The Rockies are on pace to be substantially worse.
The Rockies are largely homegrown. Their current 26-man roster includes 15 homegrown players — the most in baseball — and only five who came to the team via free agency (it was four before Wednesday's addition of Orlando Arcia, who was signed after being released by the Atlanta Braves earlier this month). It's not the fewest free agents in baseball — and two others, Bryant and reliever Scott Alexander, played for the Rockies earlier this season — but it's near the bottom of the league. The Rockies have been nearly as reliant on their own first-round draft picks (six) as all of free agency to come up with the 41 players they've used this season. They've built from within. They just haven't built enough to win.
The Rockies have used eight starting pitchers this season. Six of them — including the four with the most innings on the team — have ERAs higher than 6.00. Kyle Freeland, Anthony Senzatela, and Germán Márquez have been on the Rockies for nearly a decade. All three made their Rockies debuts in either 2016 or 2017, and all three remain in the rotation all these years later. Freeland finished fourth in Cy Young Award voting in 2018, and Márquez was an All-Star in 2021, but the trio are now in the bottom 12 in ERA among the 125 pitchers who have thrown at least 40 innings this season. Touted rookie Chase Dollander was showing signs of turning his season around (4.66 ERA in his last four starts; 2.53 in just the last two) before landing on the IL on May 22 with right forearm inflammation.
It's all relative, of course, but the bullpen has been kind of a strength for the Rockies. Almost all of their wins have been close enough to record a save, and four different relievers have at least one (including rookie Zach Agnos, who was called up in late April and has a 1.20 ERA as the primary closer). Setup man Jake Bird has pitched well, hard-throwing Seth Halvorsen has been solid outside of two brutal outings, and Victor Vodnik, coming off a decent rookie season, returned from the IL this week to further fortify the bullpen. The Rockies rank 20th in bullpen ERA, which isn't necessarily good, but on this team, that's considered a bright spot.
The shocking thing is not so much that the Rockies have lost eight games in a row — the Athletics lost 11 straight at one point — but that the Rockies have lost eight in a row, three times! They opened the season 3-9, which was bad, but basically on pace to match last year's White Sox or the 1962 Mets. Historically awful, but not unprecedented. Then, from April 11 to the first game of an April 20 doubleheader, the Rockies lost eight straight. They won the second game of the doubleheader, followed by another eight-game losing streak through April 29 (meaning, the Rockies took a loss every game day for two and a half weeks). They finally won two in a row April 30 and May 1, then they lost eight in a row again!
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The Rockies have played 18 series. They've lost all of them and been swept in half of them (including, most recently, a three-game sweep by the Cubs that ended on Wednesday). The Phillies swept the Rockies twice, seven games in all. The first-place Los Angeles Dodgers and Detroit Tigers have swept the Rockies, but so have the underperforming Texas Rangers and Cincinnati Reds. The Rockies have yet to beat any team more than once. Their only back-to-back wins came in separate series and even separate months (against the Braves on April 30, then the San Francisco Giants on May 1). They've lost by five or more runs 15 times, and even when scoring seven or more runs, they have only a .500 record (4-4). Their most lopsided win (a 12-5 thrashing of the A's on April 6) was followed two days later by a 17-2 blowout loss to the Milwaukee Brewers, which was dwarfed a month later by a 21-0 humiliation at the hands of the San Diego Padres.
(Top photo of CF Brenton Doyle after his team gave up a go-ahead home run: Justin Edmonds / Getty Images)