The Colorado Rockies continue to make the worst kind of history. On Sunday afternoon, the Rockies lost for the 50th time in 59 games this season, this one a 5-3 loss to the New York Mets at Citi Field (box score). A competitive game for Colorado, all things considered. Still, it was their eighth straight loss and 13th in their last 14 games.
They’re now on pace to go 25-137.
With Sunday’s loss, the Rockies became the first team in baseball’s modern era (since 1901) to reach 50 losses before 10 wins. The last team to reach 50 losses before 10 wins was the 1884 Kansas City Cowboys, who started the season 7-50-2. The 1884 season was the franchise’s only year in operation. The Cowboys disbanded after the season, when the Union Association dissolved.
Here are the most losses at the time of a team’s tenth win in AL/NL history:
- 1986 Louisville Colonels: 10-49
- 1904 Washington Senators: 10-45-3
- 1886 Washington Nationals: 10-45-1
- 1899 Cleveland Spiders: 10-45
The 1899 Spiders are infamous for their futility. They went 20-134 that season and not because they were a bad, down-on-their-luck team. Their owner, the Robinson family, traded their best players to the St. Louis Browns, the other team they owned, because it would boost attendance and make them the most money. Soon thereafter, MLB prohibited owners from owning multiple franchises.
The Chicago White Sox, who lost a modern-record 121 games last season, they picked up their tenth win on 2024 in Game 38. They had a whopping 17 wins when they reached 50 losses. Compared to this year’s Rockies, last year’s White Sox look like the 1998 New York Yankees.
Incompetence is the single biggest reason the Rockies are where they are. Organizational incompetence from top to bottom. But also, to lose this many games, you need to be very bad and also very unlucky. You have to play poorly and almost every break needs to go against you too. That happened to the White Sox last year. It’s even worse for this year’s Rockies.
Colorado has a minus-185 run differential, so they have been outscored by 3.1 runs per game, on average. They have lost all 19 series they’ve played this year and have lost an MLB-record 22 consecutive series dating back to last season.
