Cruds alert!

 Time again to check in with baseball's mightiest Cruds, and, no, I'm not talking about my Pittsburgh Cruds (who remain pretty Cruddy), or even the Chicago What Sox (who remain the Cruddiest team in the American League, even though their Cruddiness seems less spectacular than a year ago.)

No, sir, boys and girls. I'm talking about the new lords of Cruddiness, still on track to out-Cruddy even the historically Cruddy 2024 What Sox.

Let's hear it for those mavens of miserableness, the Colorado Rockheads!

Who yesterday gave us a heapin' helpin' of Cruddiness, as they continue to plumb depths of awfulness not seen since the late 19th century. 

The Rockheads, see, lost their 57th game last night, and they're now 44 games under .500. At 13-57 for the campaign, they're the losingest team through 70 games since the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who were 12-58 through 70 games on their way to 20-134, the worst season in baseball history.

But wait, there's more!

On the same night they reached back to the McKinley years, see, they also hit another milestone. Pretty much head-on, as it turns out.

Which is to say, they set a franchise record for swinging and missing.

Three Atlanta Braves pitchers struck the Rockheads out 19 times, led by starter Spencer Strider, who needed only six innings to fan 13 batters. Relievers Rafael Montero and Dylan Lee rung up six more Rockheads, meaning only eight of the requisite 27 outs did not end with a third strike at the plate.

Now that's futility. Even for the Rockheads, which surely is saying something.

The poor dears are 28 games out of first in the NL West and a staggering 23 games out of next-to-last, and we're still 2 1/2 weeks from the Fourth of July. No imagination exists that can envision what the Rockheads' clubhouse must be like right now. I expect them to petition baseball commissioner Rob Manfred to please-please-puh-LEEZE let them go home now and call it a season.

Manfred being the staunch defender of baseball protocol he is (cough-cough), I suspect he'd just tell them to play on.

"You gotta show up, but you don't have to swing at any pitches if you don't want to,"  he'd probably say. "In fact, based on the other night, it's probably best you don't."

Ouch. Now that would be kickin' a guy when he's down.

Like, way, waaaay down.