2025 Colorado Rockies vs. 1895 Louisville Colonels: Just how bad are the Rockies?

The only team with a worse record through the first 50 games of an MLB season is the 1895 Louisville Colonels, who went 7-43. How do the Rockies stack up agains the only team below them?

BY TRENT FINNEGAN

May 22, 2025, 10:52 AM

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The Colorado Rockies are one of the hottest storylines in baseball this year for the coldest performance on the diamond. Through 49 games, the team that calls Coors Field home is 8-41 after dropping another to the Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday, and if they lose again to Philadelphia on Thursday, they would become the second-worst team through the first 50 games of an MLB season.

The team that’s worse than them? The 1895 Louisville Colonels, who finished with a 7-43 record through the first 50. That team went on to finish with a 35-96-2 record as they somewhat turned around the second half of their season.

How does this year’s Rockies team stack up against the Colonels team from 130 years ago? There’s no chance to put them out on the field against each other, as the last living person from that team, left fielder Fred Clarke, passed away in 1960, so here is a side-by-side comparison of how the two of the worst teams in MLB history stack up against each other.

Pitching

The Colonels had 15 different players take a stint on the mound for them throughout the 1895 season, posting a total team ERA of .590. Bert Cunningham was the ace, posting a 4.75 ERA in 31 games. The third man in the rotation, Mike McDermott, led the league in wild pitches while no one in the core, five-man rotation had more strikeouts than walks.

For the Rockies, the 23 players who have thrown a pitch have combined to post an ERA of 5.92, a worse mark than the Colonels. While only four of the 23 guys have more walks than strikeouts, Colorado has a pitcher who leads the league in losses (8) and hits (84) in Antonio Senzatela and a pitcher who leads the league in earned runs (39) in German Marquez.

The purple and black at least have one pitcher with a decent ERA, as Jake Bird has posted a 1.86 number through 29 innings, but the starters have been so bad after getting out to a fairly decent start back in April.

Hitting

Louisville finished with a team batting average of .279 and an OPS of .707, and that’s including the pitchers who batted for them that season, a disadvantage that Colorado doesn’t have in 2025. The team finished dead-last in the league in those categories, along with total bases, RBIs, runs, hits, steals and walks drawn. The one bright spot for Louisville was that they hit 34 home runs, a number that was more towards the middle of the pack in the league rather than the bottom.

For Colorado, the team’s batting average is .219 while the OPS is .648. Neither of those marks are last in the league, as the Los Angeles Angels and Chicago White Sox have also been just as terrible from the batter’s box. The only category that the Rockies are the worst in the league in is the strikeouts, as Colorado’s 480 through 49 games are by far the most.

The 2023 Minnesota Twins have the most strikeouts in the history of the league, with 1,654. At 10 strikeouts per game, the Rockies are just behind their pace of 10.2 strikeouts per game as they have a great chance at rewriting the record book.

Another thing to take into account for the hitting is the ballpark, which will be looked at later. Coors Field is a very hitter-friendly park, which gives an advantage to Colorado.

Fielding

The Colonels had a team fielding percentage of .913 while the Rockies currently sit at .976. While the Rockies have had plenty of blunders on the defensive side of the diamond this year, they are nowhere on pace to being as bad as the Colonels were. There’s no way to prove it, but it’s likely that the field conditions were much worse for Louisville back in the day, and there were probably a lot more bouncing balls rather than smooth grounders.

However, both teams are in last place in the league in fielding percentage, so even though the times have changed and the fielding has improved, they are both terrible compared to the teams around them.

Fred Clarke had 49 errors for the Colonels that year, which wasn’t even close to the worst mark in the league at 86 (Bill Dahlen, Chicago Colts). No one in baseball has recorded 49 errors in a season since 1950, when Roy Smalley of the Cubs recorded 51. It’s safe to say that the Rockies won’t be committing as many errors as Louisville.

Ballpark

The Colonels played in Eclipse Park II, which is more of a pitcher-friendly park according to Baseball Reference’s park factors. It’s also the second edition of the park because the original caught fire towards the end of the 1892 season. The dimensions from left field to right (in feet) were 337/420/430/380/280, and the park saw one no-hitter in the 435 games played there. Given that that stadium wasn’t at altitude and didn’t have as vast of an outfield as Coors, this year’s Rockies team is susceptible to more runs and hits than the Colonels strictly off the park factors.

In total, the Rockies are indeed just as bad as the 1895 Colonels. While comparing today’s baseball to the game 130 years ago is almost apples to oranges in some ways, there are still plenty of parallels that show that this year’s Rockies are one of the worst teams of all time and are right up there with all the teams from before the modern era who were a stain on the game.

While we’ll never get to see Marquez on the mound pitching to Jimmy Collins, who led the Colonels in home runs that year (6), the baseball gods might not allow it given how bad both sides are.