Colorado Rockies: A 70-win season is the only goal remaining

The Colorado Rockies are a bad baseball team, quite possibly a historically bad baseball team.

This isn’t breaking news for any Colorado Rockies’ fan who hasn’t checked out on the season yet.  However, judging by message board chatter, or lack thereof, checkout time on this season passed long ago.

The only question remaining to be answered is what will the Rockies’ final season win total be?  At their current pace, they will be lucky to make it to 70 wins and if they don’t, that would be historically bad.

Only three times in the last decade and six since 1997 has a team that won 90-plus games in a season failed to win at least 70 the following season.

Those six teams include:

• 2013-14 Texas Rangers
• 2011-12 Boston Red Sox
• 2010-11 Minnesota Twins
• 2003-04 Seattle Mariners
• 1998-99 Chicago Cubs
• 1997-98 Florida Marlins

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The most memorable of these teams, of course, was the Florida Marlins.  After winning 92 games and the World Series in ’97, the Marlins had a fire sale of their roster and went on to win a pathetic 54 games in ’98.

For the Rockies, as we all know, expectations were at an all-time high coming off a season in which the Rockies won 91 games and lost a tiebreaker game for the NL West title.  They had keeping up with those expectations but that all changed when the calendar flipped to July.

In the last 34 games, the Rockies have won a grand total of 9 games. To put that into perspective, in a 162-game season, that winning percentage would result in a 43 -119 record.  That record would tie the 2003 Detroit Tigers for the second worst record in modern baseball history only behind the 1962 New York Mets (who were in their first year as a franchise) with a record of 40-120.

With a 53-65 record heading into play Monday, the Rockies are on pace to win 73 games. The issue is their struggles since July have put 70 wins and a chance of staying off that dubious list in serious jeopardy.

It is depressing to think that only four months ago playoffs was the expectation and now it is a mere 70 wins. My how the Rockies have fallen.