If the White Sox and Rockies disasters prove anything the last two MLB seasons, it might just be that while losing is inevitable, learning from it is not. Ultimately, the losing will continue until the process improves.
In the end, the miserable saga of the 2024 Chicago White Sox turned out to be a compelling but complicated potential answer for those seeking the worst Major League Baseball team ever.
If “2024 White Sox” popped up on the trademark blue square of the “Jeopardy” board, for instance, “What is the worst MLB team of all time?” would not be an acceptable answer. Their 121 losses were the most ever, by pure count, but their .253 winning percentage is only the fifth-worst among American/National League teams since 1900.
But, to the shock and horror of many, the 2025 Colorado Rockies have spent the past two-and-a-half months offering to eliminate the nuance for the recently traumatized White Sox, as well as the 1962 New York Mets, 1904 Washington Senators, 1935 Boston Braves and 1916 Philadelphia A’s.
“I hope they don’t break the record,” White Sox GM Chris Getz told USA Today. “I don’t wish that upon anyone. I really don’t.”
The Rockies enter Friday at 13-55, a .191 winning percentage that would undercut anything seen at baseball’s highest level. If we include the Negro League teams that played at least 68 games (the number the Rockies have played to date), the worst of the bunch was 1927 Memphis Red Sox team that finished 21-63 (.250).
These dueling, dubious full-throated answers also raise some questions: How historic is this back-to-back sequence of incompetence? And what, if anything, does it say about the state of the league?
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It should be actively difficult to be this bad in the contemporary version of the major leagues. Combine incentives, scarcity of talent and the mostly closed ecosystem of professional baseball, and the calculus of any major-league team falling this far behind becomes difficult to compute.
There are 780 active roster spots at any given time with the league minimum salary guaranteed, and each team has an equal allotment that thousands of ballplayers are chasing. One-thirtieth of them being put to such poor use is unlikely. One-fifteenth of them being so thoroughly squandered in rapid succession, in an era focused on quantified efficiency, seems nigh impossible.
And yet …
If you simply take the sum of winning percentages by teams in back-to-back seasons, the 2024 White Sox (.253) and 2025 Rockies as they currently stand (.191) would be the worst duo of AL/NL teams since the 1898 St. Louis Browns (.260) and 1899 Cleveland Spiders (.130). Even if the Rockies regress toward the realm of the reasonable and post the .293 winning percentage Opta Analyst’s model projects the rest of the way, the Sox (.253) and Rockies (projected to finish at .250) would still handily out-lose the closest modern “competition” – the 2018 Baltimore Orioles (.290) and 2019 Detroit Tigers (.292).The statistical outcroppings of the Rockies’ horrific performances are well-documented, but it’s worth noting that a franchise always disadvantaged by its home altitude has a mountain of problems on top of that.
Colorado starting pitchers’ 6.67 ERA (heading into Friday) would be the worst mark in MLB history if the season ended today, besting the 1996 Tigers’ 6.64 mark.
Advanced metrics don’t see much reason for optimism. Raw value- rates the rotation dead last in MLB at 128.3 (100 is league average), and their park-adjusted 144 ERA- is a bottom-10 mark going all the way back to 1876, with only the 1915 A’s and 2022 Washington Nationals logging worse marks in full seasons since the turn of the last century.
It becomes more crushing (somehow), when you realize three-fifths of that rotation is occupied by homegrown veterans the Rockies decided to sign to multiyear extensions (German Marquez, Kyle Freeland, Antonio Senzatela), and another spot is occupied by an acclaimed top-10 draft pick from 2023.
The lineup, typically at least formidable in the weird and spacious confines of Coors Field, is third-worst in baseball with an 88.4 raw value+ and tracking toward the lowest home OPS in franchise history.
Only three of their hitters have at least 100 plate appearances and above-average RV+ marks. And Ryan McMahon, the one lineup piece who might be an attractive trade asset should the Rockies choose to engage by July 31, has underachieving top-line stats, with only an 89 park-adjusted wRC+.
The KB Conundrum
Nowhere in any of those bright specks will you find Kris Bryant, Colorado’s highest-paid player and would-be face of the franchise. Through no real fault of his own, Bryant is a depressingly apt example of how losing escalates to historic scale in MLB right now.
Ten years ago, Bryant was the sport’s unquestioned top prospect, a cause célèbre as the ascendant Chicago Cubs manipulated his service time to postpone his free agency, then the obvious NL Rookie of the Year. By the time he reached that delayed free agency, he had also experienced the other side of baseball’s cynical but efficient cycle – lose some on purpose, but quickly – as part of the Cubs’ 2021 trade deadline fire sale.
When the Rockies signed him ahead of the 2022 season, Bryant’s bat had declined from its MVP peak and his defense at third base had slipped into negative territory.
The contract was out of step with the industry on several levels, but the Rockies’ through-the-looking-glass response to everyone else’s reality drove home the issue. Instead of understanding and adjusting to his waning value as a third baseman as a team that could have used upgrades pretty much anywhere, the Rockies immediately and completely moved Bryant to a less valuable position in left field. Bryant’s terrible injury luck, with a degenerative back issue now threatening his future, only exacerbated the dire results from a poor process.
It’s an amped up version of the dominoes that sent the White Sox spiraling into the depths. In Chicago, a postseason-worthy core faltered on the field and suffered a rash of injuries. Ownership spent money in a fashion somewhere between aimlessly and spitefully. The pitiful team-record deal for Andrew Benintendi, another left fielder, made headlines but no material difference in the team’s outlook.
And if you remember the other dismal teams this duo could eclipse, they mostly weren’t tanking either; they were dithering.
What Does This Say About the League?
What’s become strikingly clear is that self-delusion is now more harmful to a club’s fortunes than self-sabotage.
Every time Rockies owner Dick Monfort opens his mouth, you get a glimpse into how this franchise devolved into a pile of embarrassing fun facts. Not too long ago, he was quirkily overestimating his teams’ chances during projection season.
That soon turned into saying he didn’t “agree” with the San Diego Padres’ efforts to spend and trade for good players. And comments this offseason made it clear Monfort is interested not just in a salary cap, but in limits on overall organizational spending.
What Monfort values, which can be charitably called “loyalty,” accounts for much of the team’s wayward status. Their tendency to keep and promote their own – even when firing managers and general managers amid relentless losing – means the flow of ideas that zips through 29 other teams seemingly isn’t making it to Colorado. The players who have escaped Colorado recognize the difference, noting the wealth of information they receive in other organizations.
The Rockies don’t run an unreasonably small payroll, projecting to weigh in 21st at about $127 million, but they have spent on tying up McMahon and Freeland and Senzatela and so on without investing in the support to help them unlock their potential. (The 2024 White Sox began the season in similar territory.)
The wild extremes of the late 1890s National League ended when the American League added competition and the modern era of MLB took hold. Monfort is a virtual lock to use his club’s tragicomic misadventure as evidence that a similarly momentous shakeup is needed in MLB’s economic model. He and other owners will push for a salary cap in the next collective bargaining negotiations ahead of 2027, citing competitive balance.
Take that idea about as seriously as you’d take advice from the Rockies front office.
Just in the past four seasons, 23 of MLB’s 30 teams have made the postseason, including five of the clubs currently spending less than the Rockies. The big-spending Los Angeles Dodgers have the crown right now, but it’s more than possible to seriously compete by pushing chips into the type of player development and research and transactional efforts that undergird the business of competition.
The things Monfort wishes everyone else would just stop doing.
He’s more interested in trying to artificially lower the playing field than put any money or effort into raising his club’s level. Luckily, the front office spending cap idea might be the only thing with longer odds than the Rockies’ postseason chances.
The White Sox made major, painful changes and are beginning to see sparks of future hope. The recently dreadful Orioles and Tigers have since returned to prominence by leveraging the available talent in the league’s economic model. Even in the daunting NL West, the Arizona Diamondbacks showed it’s possible to quickly pivot from 110 losses in 2021 to a World Series appearance in 2023.
If the double-whammy proves anything, it might just be that while losing is inevitable, learning from it is not.
Research support provided by Stats Perform’s Tim Abel. For more coverage, follow our social accounts on X, Threads, Bluesky and Facebook.
What Does the Rockies’ (Unintended) Pursuit of the White Sox Losses Record Say About Baseball? Opta Analyst.
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