I’m not a clickbait headline guy, I swear. The Colorado Rockies are bad, but they’re not currently the worst team in baseball. Heck, they just swept the Milwaukee Brewers. They’ve been bad since 2019, and not long before that were bad from 2011-16 before two brief forays into the postseason that resulted in exactly zero games won. In all of that time, I’d venture to guess that they were never at any point in time the very worst team in baseball,

However, I do not take this claim lightly - the Rockies may in fact be the single most hopeless team in the four major United States mens’ sports. (I am not including soccer in this judgment, as I have basically zero knowledge of the health of those franchises.)

How can I make such a claim? First, let’s go to a macro level and compare baseball to football, basketball and hockey. There are some bad hockey teams, and my Philadelphia Flyers are one of them. They recently dismissed Chuck Fletcher as GM, and I now have hope. Plus, they and all of the other NHL bottom-feeders are in the Connor Bedard sweepstakes - he’s considered to be a can’t-miss generational prospect. The Arizona Coyotes used to play their home games in a mall, so I guess they’re at least in the discussion. Similarly, in basketball, the sport where a single player can make the most difference, all of the also-rans are currently in the Victor Wembanyana derby - he’s considered to be a Michael Jordan/LeBron James-level prospect.

Then there’s football. The Chicago Bears earned the 1st pick in the recent NFL draft and dealt it to the Carolina Panthers for a king’s ransom of draft picks. They have a high-upside quarterback in place in Justin Fields, and had more salary cap space than any club in the NFL entering the recent free agency period. You can worst-to-first somewhat easily in football, and the Bears have at least a shot to do so in the thin NFC.

So I’m pretty comfortable saying that the most hopeless franchise would currently reside in major league baseball. Is it the White Sox? Nope. I wrote about their misery early this week, and of course they’re now on a win streak. Is it the Kansas City Royals? They’re close, but they’ve got a young potential superstar in Bobby Witt Jr. and his burly sidekick, 1B Vinny Pasquantino. They appear to be unable to develop starting pitching despite a pitcher-friendly home park, but I digress. Or the Oakland Athletics? I wrote about them recently as well, and while they’re worse than the Rockies right now, they have a track record of developing quality young players and at least have the potential of much greener financial pastures ahead of them in Las Vegas.

Why the Rockies, then? There are a bunch of reasons.

What must happen to put the Rockies on the right track? Honestly, at this point I think the team needs to be sold, or at the very least the front office needs to be swept totally clean. Denver is a great market with an excellent fan base, Coors Field is a great stadium - finances are clearly not a problem. But when you’re playing in the same division as the heavyweight Dodgers and Padres, you need to be competitive in every aspect of the sport, from finances to analytics to scouting to player development.

The Detroit Tigers have been downtrodden for a long time - they changed GMs just last offseason and I already see many signs of hope there. We’ve already discussed some of the other clubs that are currently way off track. Just a decade ago, the Astros were worse than the Rockies are now. But they had a plan. The Rockies don’t, and they aren’t going anywhere until they develop one.