Last season, the Chicago White Sox established themselves as one of, if not the, worst team in major league baseball history. The team set a record for most losses of all time, with 121. Just one year later, the Colorado Rockies have performed at a staggeringly poor level, which has fans thinking: could the Rockies be even worse than the 2024 White Sox?
It seems hard to fathom that only one year after the White Sox set the record no team wants to set, the Rockies could challenge it. They currently sit at 4-25, just one month into the season. With the new collective bargaining agreement, the futility does not even guarantee the highest draft pick, which just further begs the question: why are teams not trying to win?
In the modern era (1901-present), the lowest ever win percentage amassed by a team was the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, at .235, thanks to a 36-117 record. For reference, the 2024 White Sox ended with a .253 record and set the record for the most losses in baseball history. It may only be one month into the season, but the Rockies are on track to shatter those numbers.
The 2025 Colorado Rockies hold a 4-25 record, which equals out to an abysmal .138 winning percentage. Over the course of the season, that pace would leave the team at a 23-139 overall record. Not only is that worse than last year’s White Sox, largely considered the worst team in baseball history, but blows away the pace of any other historically bad team of the last two centuries.
How exactly are this year’s Rockies managing such utterly embarrassing performances? As one could probably imagine, they are not exactly good at anything. They are dead last on offense, putting together a 64 wRC+, 36 points below average. Their 28.1% K rate is nearly four percentage points higher than any other team in the league. Ironically, they hit the ball at the fourth-highest hard-hit% rate in the league, but that has not amounted to any success.
Pitching, meanwhile, is never an area of strength for the Rockies, but they somehow are not the worst in that area this season. They sit at 28th in SIERA, 24th in xFIP, and 28th in team ERA. One thing the Rockies’ pitching staff does not do is strike people out, a dangerous game to play in the high altitude of Coors Field. They are dead last in K/9 and K%, and 28th in K/BB. Add these numbers to the fact that they are hit fifth hardest of any team in baseball, and fans can see why the team struggles so much.
Even the Rockies’ defense ranks, at best, in the bottom ten of the league, depending on which metric is used in evaluation, and often bottom five. So to recap, the Rockies are league worst offensively, and near league worst defensively, and on the pitching side. It checks out, then, that they would be at a historic bad pace. In an NL West that may be the best in the entire league, their futility only stands out even more.
The question becomes, can the Rockies keep up this pace throughout the season? The answer is, yes, they can. Offensively, it appears that they have had a least a little bad luck, given their hard hit rates, which implies they may stabilize in the coming months. The pitching is going to be bad and stay bad, and the farm only has a couple of names that could reasonably be expected to come up and add immediate value. With them likely trying to sell off at the trade deadline, it is clear the Rockies can, and likely will, break the loss record.
Having teams perform this badly for two consecutive years is bad for the sport. They both have a few younger bright spots in their respective teams (the White Sox promptly traded one, Crochet, immediately following the season), but the overall product does not even feel major league caliber. Truthfully, I think there are minor league teams out there that would put up better showings in the MLB than the Rockies do right now.
MLB needs to figure out a way to fix these teams being so inept. Sure, every league has bad teams, no matter what happens. The league can still incentivize winning, push more spending, and further reward teams trying as opposed to tanking. There would still be bad teams, but perhaps not record-breaking bad teams multiple years running. That lack of quality pushes fans away, something the league desperately needs to avoid if it wants to continue to flourish.
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