Understatement of the 2025 baseball season: The Colorado Rockies are off to a rough start. As of Wednesday, May 7, they had a 6-28 record, putting them on pace for one of the worst seasons in modern baseball.
Their season so far closely mirrors the 2024 Chicago White Sox, who finished with just 41 wins and are widely considered the “Bad News Bears” of the modern era.
How bad are the 2025 Colorado Rockies?
At their current rate, the Rockies can shatter the White Sox’s futility mark. They’re on pace to win just 29 games. Manager Bud Black seemingly has the patience of a saint. His post-game interviews are blunt about what’s gone wrong, but he said after an April 29 loss that the fight is still there.
“We got a lot of young guys who, I think, [are] wanting to prove that they belong, so their energy level is high,” Black said. “They’re coming to play, wanting to play. We have a good group of veteran players who are holding it together, which is good, but there’s frustration for sure.”
A third straight 100-loss campaign and the worst season in Rockies history –– the 2023 Rockies lost 103 games –– is possible, if not likely. Veteran pitcher Kyle Freeland wants to see a turnaround soon.
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The Rockies opened the season with a 5-25 record, one of just seven teams since 1901 to post five or fewer wins in their first 30 games.
“I take it very personally, as I assume anyone in my situation would,” Freeland said. “This is the team I want to win with. I signed up for five more years to be a part of this. I want to win here and be a part of this, but we are going in the wrong direction.”
What is holding them back?
Baseball is all about statistics. Over 162 games, they tend to tell the story of a season. Right now, the Rockies’ stats are going in the wrong direction. The team is dead last in slugging OPS. They have struck out a major league-high 344 times, and despite playing their home games in the high-altitude thin air of the most hitter-friendly park in the league, their home run record is the fifth worst in baseball at just 27.
The pitching is also having a tough go, although that is not unheard of in Coors Field. The staff as a whole has the fourth-worst ERA in baseball, currently at 5.38. German Marquez, an All-Star in 2021, is having the worst season of his career. After a loss to the San Francisco Giants on Sunday, May 5, he has a career-worst six-game losing streak, and his ERA is 9.90 for the season.
Combine all those dreary numbers with the fact that, at the moment, Colorado is playing in the best division in baseball, and there isn’t much light at the end of the tunnel. They are a whopping 17 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West. Of the 128 games left in the season, 42 of them are against NL West opponents, including 16 in September.
Is there any good news on the horizon?
Despite it all, the team is probably still making money. The Rockies have been in the top 15 in attendance every year since 2021, which speaks to how much of a draw Coors Field is in the summer months. The team currently ranks 19th in the league in attendance –– probably their best stat going into 2025.
Team management does have a plan. The Rockies are famous for building from within and developing their prospects into major league stars. Three players that are showing signs of improvement and the ability to lead future success are rookie pitcher Chase Dollander, Gold Glove shortstop Ezequiel Tovar and third-year catcher Hunter Goodman, who leads the team in batting average, RBI and home runs.
A tear-down-and-rebuild has worked before, as recently as 2017 and 2018. However, for now, they remain on the wrong side of history.
