The fierce battle to stay out of the basement in Major League Baseball has primarily been a fight between five or six teams in 2025. That fight had a twist on Thursday, June 19, with one swing of the bat.
The usual suspects: the Chicago White Sox, the Miami Marlins, the Athletics and, of course, the historically bad Colorado Rockies, are all jockeying for that ignominious position. In the last couple of weeks, the Washington Nationals entered the fray as well.
Why are the Nationals feeling better about themselves?
The Nats were mired in an 11-game tailspin, with the last three of those losses coming at home to, of all teams, the 17-win Rockies. On June 19, outfielder James Wood decided enough is enough.
Wood hit a two-run homer in the fourth to give his team a 2-0 lead, but the Rockies fought back, and it looked like they would earn a four-game sweep in Washington, D.C. That is, until Wood walked it off with another two-run bomb in the 11th inning. You could hear the relief in manager Dave Martinez’s voice post-game.
“We kept saying somehow, some way, we’ll win this game,” Martinez said. “We gotta have the right moment. What a moment for the kid to come up there and lift us, really get us out of this funk. That was awesome.”
Wood, the second-year player from nearby Rockville, Maryland, leads the team with a .284 average, 20 homers and 56 RBI this season. Before their 11-game skid, the Nationals were playing near .500 baseball with a 30-33 record.
“I just think it’s a big weight off our shoulders,” Wood said. “We’ve been playing hard, we’ve been hitting the ball hard, it just hasn’t bounced our way, so it’s just good to get in the right column.”
Who is battling to stay out of the MLB basement?
The right column is the win column. Which begs the question: Is anyone close to the Rockies in the race to the basement?
Colorado has 17 wins, and with a month to go before the All-Star break, the team is still on pace for the worst record ever. A lot can change with almost 100 games left, which is why fans should keep an eye on the White Sox, who set the modern-day record for losses in a season with 121 last year. Divine intervention notwithstanding, the Sox have only 23 wins and are currently mired in a seven-game losing streak.
“No one’s satisfied,” said White Sox starter Davis Martin. “It’s a young team. It’s a learning team that isn’t satisfied. We want to win these games. We want to win these series.”
How many other teams are flirting with disaster?
The Pittsburgh Pirates and Miami Marlins are both at 29 wins. The A’s have just 30, and the Baltimore Orioles and Nationals are tied with 31 wins. Martinez, who got emotional talking about his team’s fight after the win, is hoping it’s a springboard to better things.
“Winning in the major leagues is hard. It really is,” Martinez said. “Winning a game like that after losing so many in a row? What a feeling. It’s a great feeling, so let’s hold on to that feeling, come back tomorrow and do it again.”
The Nationals may not have much luck in the coming days as they begin a nine-game West Coast trip this weekend. They’ll start in Los Angeles and then head to San Diego to take on two of the best teams in the league.
As for the rest of the bottom dwellers, the Rockies just had their longest winning streak of the season snapped. It stood at four games. Warren Schaeffer, the Rockies’ 40-year-old interim manager, has been on the job since the team fired Bud Black on May 11.
“I mean, that’s life,” Schaeffer said. “Life’s gonna hit you in the face a lot. You got to keep waking up and getting after it, and really, there’s no way around it. You got to go straight through it.”
That attitude could be paying off. Despite the walk-off loss on Thursday, June 19, Colorado has won five of their last 10 games. The Marlins and A’s have done the same. Historically bad? Three and a half months until we find out.
contributed to this report.