Extreme teams: Rockies and Royals

Both clubs are suffering this year, though they’ve known glory in the past

Sep 15, 2023

The Colorado Rockies and Kansas City Royals are nearing the end of a season they would both like to forget.

The Rockies might finish the 2023 schedule with a triple-digit figure in the loss column. (If they avoid reaching 100, they’ll definitely get close.) The Royals have no such uncertainty. They already know that this will be the seventh 100-defeat season in their 55-year history.

There have been happier times, of course. Colorado is just 16 years removed from the sole World Series appearance since the franchise’s creation in 1993, while the Royals still savor the world championship they won just eight years ago.

These ballclubs — the Rockies and the Royals — are the subjects of today’s look at the extreme performances of a pair of teams during the Modern Era, the period between 1961 and the present. I’ve been working my way through the alphabetical order of team nicknames on successive Fridays, leading to this 13th installment in my 15-part series.

Rankings of each franchise’s best and worst performances are based on team scores (TS), which are plotted on an equalized 100-point scale, allowing us to make direct comparisons of clubs from different seasons. (Click here to learn more about the TS formula.)

These are the years at both extremes for today’s clubs:

Best year for the Rockies: This was a simple choice, given that Colorado secured its only National League pennant in 2007. The Rockies won 14 of their final 15 games to clinch a wild-card berth, then rolled through the first two rounds of the playoffs with a 7-0 record. Their momentum was derailed by the Boston Red Sox, who swept Colorado in the World Series. Left fielder Matt Holliday led the club in homers (36), RBIs (137), and batting average (.340). First baseman Todd Helton batted .320. Pitcher Jeff Francis finished with a 17-9 record.

Worst year for the Rockies: Colorado has never lost more than 98 games in a season, a record that it might break in 2023. But these rankings exclude the current year, thereby leaving 2005 as the worst squad in franchise history with its 67-95 record. Helton paced the team with a .320 average, precisely what he would hit two years later for the NL title team. And Francis again led the pitching staff at 14-12.

Best year for the Royals: Kansas City has won a pair of world titles in its history, but TS considers the 2015 champs to have been the better team. The Royals walked away with a 12-game margin in the American League Central, then went 11-5 in the postseason, which they capped with a five-game World Series victory over the New York Mets. Center fielder Lorenzo Cain batted .307. Designated hitter Kendrys Morales drove home 106 runs. And left fielder Alex Gordon topped the club with an on-base percentage of .377.

Worst year for the Royals: Kansas City touched bottom in 2005, the same year that Colorado suffered its worst season. A horrendous 6-18 April set the Royals on track to finish 50 games below .500 at 56-106. Designated hitter Mike Sweeney still managed to fashion a .300 average. And 21-year-old pitcher Zack Greinke showed some promise despite his 5-17 record.

Look below for the 10 top and bottom seasons between 1993 and 2022 for Colorado or between 1969 and 2022 for Kansas City. Similar rankings for all other Major League Baseball clubs can be found in the print edition of Baseball’s Best (and Worst) 2023 Yearbook.

Each team is listed below with the year in brackets, followed by regular-season win-loss record, postseason results (if any) in parentheses, margin between runs scored and allowed per game, and Modern Era percentile.

These are the postseason abbreviations: P indicates that a club made the playoffs, L means that it won a league championship, and W signifies that it won the World Series.

The Modern Era percentile is the share of all 1,656 major-league clubs from 1961 through 2022 that a given team outperformed, based on TS comparisons.

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Top 10 for Rockies (1993-2022)

1. Rockies [2007], 90-73 (LP), plus-0.63 margin, 95.0% in era
2. Rockies [2009], 92-70 (P), plus-0.55 margin, 84.2% in era
3. Rockies [2010], 83-79, plus-0.33 margin, 67.0% in era
4. Rockies [2018], 91-72 (P), plus-0.21 margin, 66.9% in era
5. Rockies [2017], 87-75 (P), plus-0.41 margin, 64.4% in era
6. Rockies [1995], 77-67 (P), plus-0.01 margin, 61.5% in era
7. Rockies [2000], 82-80, plus-0.44 margin, 56.4% in era
8. Rockies [1996], 83-79, minus-0.02 margin, 54.6% in era
9. Rockies [1997], 83-79, plus-0.09 margin, 51.1% in era
10. Rockies [2006], 76-86, plus-0.01 margin, 46.3% in era

Bottom 10 for Rockies (1993-2022)

1. Rockies [2005], 67-95, minus-0.75 margin, 6.0% in era
2. Rockies [1993], 67-95, minus-1.29 margin, 8.0% in era
3. Rockies [2012], 64-98, minus-0.81 margin, 9.4% in era
4. Rockies [2020], 26-34, minus-1.30 margin, 14.1% in era
5. Rockies [1999], 72-90, minus-0.75 margin, 14.9% in era
6. Rockies [2014], 66-96, minus-0.39 margin, 16.9% in era
7. Rockies [2015], 68-94, minus-0.66 margin, 17.4% in era
8. Rockies [2022], 68-94, minus-1.08 margin, 17.9% in era
9. Rockies [2019], 71-91, minus-0.76 margin, 18.7% in era
10. Rockies [2004], 68-94, minus-0.56 margin, 19.1% in era

Top 10 for Royals (1969-2022)

1. Royals [2015], 95-67 (WLP), plus-0.51 margin, 95.2% in era
2. Royals [1980], 97-65 (LP), plus-0.71 margin, 92.4% in era
3. Royals [1985], 91-71 (WLP), plus-0.30 margin, 92.1% in era
4. Royals [1977], 102-60 (P), plus-1.06 margin, 90.3% in era
5. Royals [2014], 89-73 (LP), plus-0.17 margin, 83.6% in era
6. Royals [1976], 90-72 (P), plus-0.63 margin, 81.5% in era
7. Royals [1989], 92-70, plus-0.34 margin, 79.9% in era
8. Royals [1978], 92-70 (P), plus-0.67 margin, 77.9% in era
9. Royals [1975], 91-71, plus-0.38 margin, 76.4% in era
10. Royals [1982], 90-72, plus-0.41 margin, 73.7% in era

Bottom 10 for Royals (1969-2022)

1. Royals [2005], 56-106, minus-1.44 margin, 0.9% in era
2. Royals [2006], 62-100, minus-1.32 margin, 1.8% in era
3. Royals [2004], 58-104, minus-1.14 margin, 1.9% in era
4. Royals [2009], 65-97, minus-0.96 margin, 6.9% in era
5. Royals [2010], 67-95, minus-1.04 margin, 9.2% in era
6. Royals [2022], 65-97, minus-1.05 margin, 9.6% in era
7. Royals [2018], 58-104, minus-1.20 margin, 10.3% in era
8. Royals [2007], 69-93, minus-0.44 margin, 13.5% in era
9. Royals [2002], 62-100, minus-0.95 margin, 13.7% in era
10. Royals [2019], 59-103, minus-1.10 margin, 13.9% in era

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