The Colorado Rockies found a way to become interesting and relevant for the first time since trading away Nolan Arenado. The Blake Street Bums have a real opportunity to be the worst team in modern baseball history.
For the first time in years, I find myself looking at Rockies box scores and detailed standings reports. Tracking their ineptitude has become a fascination akin to a slow-motion car crash. Every game they lose brings them one closer to new lows.
Let’s start with the record: the Rockies are 7-36 (before playing Friday or Saturday). The next closest “losers” are the Chicago White Sox — who set the record for most losses in a season just last year at 121 — and they have 14 wins.
That’s right. The second worst team has won twice as many games as the Rockies.
But it gets so much worse. For example, the Rockies have a -137 run differential, which is 63 worse than the next team, the AL East cellar dweller Baltimore Orioles. The Rockies have given up 275 runs, 30 more than any other team. But at least the 138 they have scored is only second worst; the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 135 is slightly more anemic.
But simply being the worst team this year would not be that fun. The Rockies make that a race every year. What makes this year special is the historic nature of what they are failing to do.
Right now the Rockies are on pace to win 24 games. Put another way, they are on pace to lose 138 games. That is mind-numbing.
For more than a half century, the Amazin’ Mets inaugural season record of 40-120 set the bar for futility. Few teams came within 10 losses of that record over the years and only the 2003 Detroit Tigers — so bad the apocalyptic HBO series “The Last of Us” used them as a reference point — came close, missing the mark by one.
Then last year’s White Sox finally ended the Mets’ pain. Their -306 season run differential was more than 100 runs worse than all but one other MLB team. No prizes for guessing who finished second to the bottom with a -247 run differential.
Last year’s White Sox were so bad that it appeared that they may not only break the total losses mark, but they had a serious shot at the lowest winning percentage in the modern age. The 1916 Philadelphia Athletics hold the crown at .235 while the 1935 Boston Braves finished .002 percentage points worse than the Mets. Thanks to a late season “hot streak” that saw the Sox win four of their last six games, they avoided the decrepit double.
Currently the Rockies are sporting a .163 winning percentage.
They have a legitimate shot at breaking records set a century ago by teams that eventually had to skip town. Not only that, but the Rockies seem intent on putting themselves in the company of the worst teams ever, regardless of era. For record purposes, most do not count the hapless pre-1900 teams; they played by different rules and in different leagues based on regional affiliations.
And yet.
The Rockies’ current winning percentage is worse than all but one team all-time, the pitiful 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who were 20-134 with a .130 winning percentage. Of course that team had been drained of all its talent to boost the owner’s other team, they were forced to play most of their games on the road and they went out of existence following that travesty.
Rockies fans will not be so lucky.
Plenty of reasons exist for this atrocity against sports. Chasing away stars like Arenado, Trevor Story and DJ LeMahieu. A poor farm system whose top prospects never seem to pan out. Signing a brittle, former MVP to the worst contract ever. A management team that is considered backward and behind the times. Pumping money into an adjacent hotel and rooftop bar, rather than the team.
On second thought, the Rooftop Bar is probably a prerequisite for sitting through a Rockies game these days. That may be the only reason attendance has not cratered. It seems the only people who care less about winning games than Rockies fans are the Dick and Charlie Monfort.
I am a part of the problem, too. I buy two season tickets every year, failing to make the Monforts accountable for the putrid product they run out onto the field. Furthermore, after nearly being thrown out of Coors Field at the end of 2023, I managed the feat in 2024. On both occasions my offense seems to have been cheering too loudly for the Rockies. I assume that the Monforts would prefer their fans docile and asleep so they do not notice how bad the Rockies version of baseball has become.
It is possible even God is rooting for the Rockies to lose more. The new pope is, after all, a White Sox fan.
As I mentioned to a friend a few days ago, it is possible that the Rockies do not win another game this month. They are playing away to Arizona, home to the Phillies and Yankees, and then away to the Cubs and the Mets. All are above .500 and three lead their division. If the Rockies fail to achieve a surprise victory, they will finish the month on an 18-game slide (three and eight games from more records!) and end May at 7-51.
Fifty losses before June 1st. As they say, in baseball anything is possible. This year the Rockies are testing the bottom limits of that phrase.
Mario Nicolais is an attorney and columnist who writes on law enforcement, the legal system, health care and public policy. Follow him on BlueSky: @MarioNicolais.bsky.social.
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