By the numbers: Did the Rockies just have the worst month in baseball history?

April couldn’t end sooner for the Rockies. Five wins and 25 losses so far this season, nine of those by four runs or more. Tied for the worst start over 29 games in league history. They’ve allowed the second-most runs in baseball, which is maybe to be expected, but they’ve also scored at a worse pace.

Nothing has seemingly gone right.

But has it been a significant stink when compared to all the worst months that have ever been had by a baseball team? Or just another terrible month in the history of baseball, not even noteworthy for how bad it’s been? How does it look under the hood?

For the purposes of this article, we can treat March and April as one month, which is a standard in statistical circles because of the variability of Opening Day, and the off days in April which usually produce around 30 games in March and April combined.

We can start with the run differential, which is a great indicator of the underlying health of a team. Opponents scored 77 more runs than the Rockies since the start of the season. That’s not good! For comparison, the Miami Marlins’ opponents outscored them by 51 runs for the second-worst in April.

If the Rockies kept this pace, they’d be the worst team since home plate was changed to its current shape in 1900, with a whopping 415+ run difference between runs scored and runs allowed. The worst modern-day team was the 1932 Red Sox with their -345 full-year total, and they won 43 games and finished 64 games behind the champion Yankees.

But this is just one month. And there have been many worse months, even by this measure — the 2023 Athletics just had the worst monthly differential on record, being outscored by 113 runs just two seasons ago. According to STATS Perform, 39 teams have seen worse months than the Rockies since 1950. Oh, phew, they’ve only had the 40th worst month by run differential, out of 11,238 team months in that time frame. That’s a lot of months. The Rockies’ first month of the season was in the 99.6th percentile when it comes to the worst months by run differential. Still in the running for worst month ever.

Don’t blame their pitching. Sure, their 5.30 team ERA right now is unsightly, and their best pitcher by WAR (Kyle Freeland, whose stuff is up!) has an ERA nearing six, but it’s only a couple points worse than the Marlins’ just this year, and it’s nowhere near the 1996 Tigers and 1999 Rockies, who had ERAs that started with a six for the full season.

Apologies to Felipe Lira, Omar Olivares and Jose Lima, but that Tigers team faced more batters than any other team ever and is widely regarded as the worst staff of all time. By the time you park and league adjust that ERA number for this year’s Rockies, they’re only in the bottom six or so percent of pitching staffs judged by a full year, and of course, there’ve been many, many worse single months.

The hitting, on the other hand? Right now, they’re 36 percent worse than league average by wRC+, an overall offensive stat with park and league adjustments. They’re striking out more than any other team in the big leagues, and they’re doing that with a below-average walk rate and below-average slugging, so they aren’t getting what they’ve paid for in whiffs.

Right now, if the season were over, they’d be the worst park-and-league adjusted offense in modern baseball history. Worse even than the second year of the expansion Mets in 1963, who gave Al Moran 370 plate appearances to hit one homer and hit .193. Not picking on one player from back in the day — just saying, if you paced out these Rockies players to 300-plus plate appearances, it would be hard to pick out a single Moran from the group of candidates. Again, though, when it comes to one month, the 2003 Mets spent September 47 percent worse than league average as the worst team in the last 23 years. Mo Vaughn and José Reyes couldn’t save them.

It all boils down to wins and losses in the end. And of course, it’s been a slog there, with a paltry five wins to start the season. I guess the good news is that there have been teams like the 1981 Blue Jays and the 1995 Reds that spent an entire month winless, though they played only ten and five games, respectively. When it comes to win percentages among teams that played at least 22 games in a statistical month, the Rockies are climbing the charts, and not in a good way. Thanks to STATS Perform, the worst 20 teams with full months, by win percentage, counting April and March as one month:

At least it’s their first foray onto this list? Has to hurt as an Orioles fan to see so many entrants there. And last year’s White Sox had two months that were worse than this March/April by the Rockies!

It probably won’t keep going like this. Things tend to even out. They’re not going to win 27 games this season, at least. Nobody’s been that bad, yet. They won’t go to the playoffs, but they might not make history either.

The 1988 Orioles went 53-85 the rest of the way after starting the season with a solitary win to start the season, the 1982 Twins ended up with 60 wins, while the 2003 Tigers only managed 43 wins. It isn’t heartening to share a list with last year’s White Sox, but the “top” ten teams on this list averaged 53 wins and ended up with decently mediocre seasons when all was said and done, with the high-water mark going to the 67 wins by the 2002 Orioles — Jerry Hairston and Rodrigo Lopez had big second halves to make it respectable for that team.

But other than the 2024 White Sox, most of those teams were boringly bad when all was said and done, even if they had worse months than these Rockies. If Colorado’s bats don’t wake up, they will challenge those White Sox for the worst team in modern history. That would be a feat.

(Top photo: Justin Edmonds / Getty Images)

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