A glance at the current standings will tell you many things, the least of which are the present straits of the Colorado Rockies. Going into Monday’s slate of games, the Rockies are 4-23, which is good for a winning percentage of .148.
That bottom-scraping figure is notable for a couple of reasons. One is that it’s easily the worst in MLB right now, and MLB right now includes a Chicago White Sox team that’s on pace for a record-tying 121 losses. It’s good that the White Sox and the record for most losses in a season came up because it’s very much relevant to the current Rockies model. Last season, the White Sox set that record with a mark of 41-121, which “bested” the 40-120-1 1962 New York Mets for that particular dishonor. The Rockies and their current winning percentage of .148 means they’re on pace to go 24-138 in 2025. As you have already surmised, that would break the 2024 White Sox’s freshly set record and do so in knockout fashion.
The White Sox last season were in many ways set up early to mount their assault on history, and for these purposes that means they got off to a miserable start. They opened up the 2024 campaign with a 4-22 record, but on April 27 of last year they eked out an 8-7 win over the Tampa Bay Rays in extras to push their record to 5-22. At this point, you’ll please appreciate that the Rockies are not only comfortably on pace to clock the most losses in a season ever but they’ve also “topped” the White Sox’s miserable and foundational start to their 2024 season. It’s early, yes, but the Rockies’ own assault on history hereby bears monitoring thanks to the unexampled depths of their start to the season. As such, it also merits a brief exploration both in terms of who they got to such a place and what the road ahead looks like.
First, this is not a recent development. The Rockies are hellbent on their seventh straight losing season, their fourth straight season of at least 90 losses, and their third straight season of at least 100 losses. So there’s a certain trajectory in place. Indeed, since the Rockies began their sustained bottoming-out with the 2023 season, just the White Sox at .310 have a worse winning percentage than Colorado’s .353. In the current season, the Rockies are, as you would expect, bad at everything. The pitching staff has hemorrhaged the most runs in MLB, and that’s only partially explained by the fact that the Rox play their home games at a mile above sea level. When it comes to park-adjusted ERA, Rockies pitchers are tied for 28th in MLB. The offense is no better. Yes, Coors Field helps hide the truth when it comes to Colorado hitters, but right now those Colorado hitters are dead last in the majors, by a significant margin, in park-adjusted OPS. They’re also last in MLB in Defensive Efficiency Rating, which is the percentage of balls in play that a defense converts into outs. To repeat: They’re bad at everything.
On a broader level, nothing reinforces the 2025 Colorado Rockies Experience quite like the fact that a middle reliever, Jake Bird, presently leads the team in WAR. There’s also not a great deal of help on the way, as the Rockies, despite all the recent years of losing, have an average-at-best farm system in place. On more specific levels, Charlie Condon’s pro career to date has been notable for injuries and inconsistency, and Chase Dollander, while quite promising in a vacuum, is an especially poor fit for Coors Field. The point is not much needle-moving help is on the way, at least in the near-term.
The other facet of this is the brutal docket the Rockies face, which distinguishes them from their fellow travelers in baseball misery on the South Side of Chicago. The National League is plainly the stronger loop right now, and the NL West in particular, which houses the Rockies, is a gauntlet all its own. To date, the Rockies rank 21st in MLB in strength of schedule as measured by opponents’ average winning percentage (.488 in this case). Moving forward, though, the Rockies’ remaining opponents have an average winning percentage of .535, which gives them the toughest remaining slate in all of MLB. That’s the nature of playing in the NL West, in which every team not named the Rockies harbors expectations of contention and in most cases excellence. Framed another way, of the Rockies’ 135 remaining games, just 40 come against teams that presently have losing records. That, to repeat, is a gauntlet, and the Rockies are thus far uniquely ill-equipped to handle it.
On a less grim note, other teams of a recent vintage have endured similar starts but managed not to bottom out to the extent necessary to make Ugly History. The Rox were 4-21 through their first 25 games of this season, and three teams – the 2024 White Sox, the 2022 Cincinnati Reds, and the 2003 Tigers – were even worse across those opening 25. The Reds and Tigers wound up ducking the record for most losses in a season, and in the Reds’ case they wound up “rebounding” to finish at a fairly unremarkable 62-100.
Really, though, the Rockies’ schedule ahead is what distinguishes them at this point and makes it worth wondering whether the White Sox’s record for most losses in a season will be a short-lived one. As it turns out, the White Sox will visit the Rockies in early July, so they have a small say in the matter. In the meantime, let the losses flow like water from Rocky Mountain springs and glaciers or perhaps like beer from Coors.
