The 2025 Colorado Rockies have avoided the grimmest kind of history. Their 7-6 victory over the Los Angeles Angels on Friday marked their 42nd win of the season, and that means they will avoid breaking the 2024 White Sox’s Major League Baseball record of 121 losses in a season.
The Rockies are now at 112 losses with eight games left to play. That puts them on pace for 118 losses on the season, which would still be one of the highest loss tallies in MLB history. Here’s the current list of note:
TeamLossesWinning percentage
1. 2024 Chicago White Sox
121
.248
2. 1962 New York Mets
120
.250
3. 2003 Detroit Tigers
119
.265
4. 1916 Philadelphia Athletics
117
.235
T-5. 2018 Baltimore Orioles
115
.290
T-5. 1935 Boston Braves
115
.248
For a time, the Rockies seemed bent on breaking the White Sox’s record less than a year since it was set. Colorado was 5-25 at the end of April and 9-49 at the close of May. At that point, the Rockies were on pace for 137 losses, which gave them plenty of breathing room insofar as the White Sox’s record was concerned. Since that low point, however, the Rockies have been more conventionally terrible than unprecedentedly awful. Longtime manager Bud Black was let go 40 games into the season and replaced with Warren Schaeffer in the second week of May. The Rockies under Schaeffer continued to struggle badly, but once the calendar flipped to June they found a higher, if still very bad, level.
Since June 1, the Rockies are 33-63, which is good for a winning percentage of .344. That’s a 109-loss pace across an entire season. Again, that’s bad but nowhere close to the depths of the Rockies’ earlier clip. The Rockies have far and away allowed the most runs in MLB since June 1, and they’ve ranked 26th in runs scored over that span. Bake in the effects of Coors Field at a mile above sea level, and it’s safe to say they’ve still been quite hapless at all major phases of the game. That, though, hasn’t been enough to keep them on target for history, and that’s to the White Sox’s chagrin. The record no team wants stands for another year.
At a fundamental level, though, the Rockies are already the worst team in modern MLB history with room to spare. That’s because of their run differential, or their runs allowed subtracted from their runs scored. At present, the 2025 Rockies have a run differential of minus-403. That’s the worst run differential in modern MLB history — i.e., since 1900. Previously, the 1932 Red Sox with a run differential of minus-349 held that record. The worst run differential for 162-game era, 1962 onward, had been minus-339 by the 2023 Athletics. The Rockies this season, however, have blown past both those figures, and they still have games left on the schedule.
To get any kind of “worst run differential” leaderboard that the 2025 Rockies don’t lead, we have to expand our pool to include the 19th century. Via the CBS Sports Research Desk, here are the 10 worst team run differentials across all of major-league history:
TeamRun differential
1899 Cleveland Spiders
minus-723
1890 Pittsburgh Alleghenys
minus-638
1897 St. Louis Browns
minus-491
1889 Louisville Colonels
minus-459
1883 Philadelphia Quakers
minus-424
1890 Buffalo Bisons
minus-406
2025 Colorado Rockies
minus-403
1895 Louisville Colonels
minus-393
It didn’t seem quite possible for a modern MLB team to be outscored by 400 or more runs in a single season, but then the 2025 Colorado Rockies came along. In related matters, the Rockies in 2025 are 7-43 when the game is decided by five or more runs. They have more blowout losses this season then they have total wins.
No, the 2025 Rockies won’t clock the most losses in a season, but you can still make a compelling case that they’re the worst major-league team in well more than a century.