How long did each loss record last before it was broken?

The 1916 Athletics' AL mark of 117 stood 87 years until the 2003 Tigers reached 119. The 1962 Mets' modern record of 120 stood 62 years until 2024. The 1899 Spiders' all-time 134 has stood for over 125 years and is not a live record, since the conditions that produced it no longer exist.

Are 100-loss seasons getting more common?

Yes, sharply. Between 1970 and 2002 no team lost 110 games in a season. Five have done it in the last several full seasons alone. Whatever is driving that trend — teardown rebuilds, payroll gaps, or both — the bottom of the standings is deeper now than it was for most of the divisional era.

Does a strike or pandemic season count toward the record?

It cannot. A 60-game or 114-game schedule leaves no mathematical path to 110 losses, which is why 1981, 1994, 1995 and 2020 never appear on any futility list regardless of how bad the worst team was in relative terms.

Which franchise has the most 100-loss seasons?

Franchise-level totals depend heavily on how you count relocations and name changes, and sources disagree on the accounting. The reliable statement is a narrower one: no franchise has produced more than one 120-loss season, and only three have produced any.

Most Losses in an MLB Season: The Record and How It Moved

The MLB record for most losses in a season is 121, set by the 2024 Chicago White Sox. The all-time major league mark, from before the modern era began in 1901, is 134 by the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.

Those are two different records and both are correct. Which one you want depends on whether you count the pre-1900 National League, and almost every source that answers this question picks a side without telling you.

From the scorebook — Modern record: 121, 2024 Chicago White Sox. All-time: 134, 1899 Cleveland Spiders. Previous modern record: 120, 1962 New York Mets, which stood 62 years.

How the loss record moved

The record has changed hands four times in the modern era, and the gaps between changes are the interesting part.

Year set	Team	Losses	Record type	Stood for
1899	Cleveland Spiders	134	All-time	125+ years and counting
1904	Washington Senators	113	Early modern high	Passed in 1916
1916	Philadelphia Athletics	117	AL record	87 years
1935	Boston Braves	115	Modern NL high of its day	Passed in 1962
1962	New York Mets	120	Modern MLB record	62 years
2003	Detroit Tigers	119	Broke AL record	AL mark until 2024
2024	Chicago White Sox	121	Modern MLB record	Current

Two of those seasons were expansion-era artefacts: the Mets in their first year of existence, and the schedule itself, which grew from 154 games to 162 in 1961-62. The 1962 Mets could not have lost 120 games under the old schedule.

What is the worst 162-game season?

If you restrict the question to the 162-game era and rank by winning percentage rather than raw losses, the list is cleaner. Note that the 1962 Mets fall outside it: their season was scheduled for 162 but only 160 were played, two rainouts never made up. Rainouts also shorten a handful of the seasons below to 161 games, which is why percentage is the fairer sort.

Team	Record	Win %
2024 Chicago White Sox	41-121	.253
2003 Detroit Tigers	43-119	.265
2025 Colorado Rockies	43-119	.265
2018 Baltimore Orioles	47-115	.290
2019 Detroit Tigers	47-114	.292
2023 Oakland Athletics	50-112	.309
2013 Houston Astros	51-111	.315
2004 Arizona Diamondbacks	51-111	.315

Six of the eight are from the last dozen years. That is not a coincidence, and it is the single most useful fact on this page.

The record almost fell twice more

2003 Detroit Tigers. The Tigers were 38-118 with six games left, one loss from tying the Mets. They won five of the last six to finish 43-119. Nobody in Detroit pretended it was anything other than a race against the record book.

2025 Colorado Rockies. Colorado finished 43-119, two losses shy of the White Sox’ mark set the year before. They also posted a run differential of −424, the worst of the modern era, breaking a record that had stood since the 1932 Boston Red Sox. By the measure of how thoroughly a team is outplayed, the Rockies were worse than the club that holds the loss record.

Two near-misses in three seasons after 62 years of stability says something about the current shape of the league.

Why losses cluster at the bottom now

Between 1970 and 2002, not one MLB team lost 110 games in a season. Thirty-three years, zero entries. In the seasons since, it has happened repeatedly, including in consecutive years.

The mechanics are not mysterious. Teardown rebuilds trade every useful player at once rather than turning a roster over gradually. Payroll gaps between the top and bottom of the league have widened. And until 2023, finishing with the worst record delivered the first overall draft pick, which gave the bottom of the standings a reason not to fight.

MLB’s draft lottery, introduced in 2023, now decides the top six picks by chance. Whether it changes behaviour at the bottom is still an open question, but the 2024 White Sox and 2025 Rockies both happened after it took effect.

The number that puts it in perspective

Losing 121 of 162 is a .253 winning percentage. It is the most losses ever recorded, and the team that did it still won 41 games.

That is the part worth sitting with. The worst season in the history of the sport produced forty-one wins — against playoff teams, on the road, in September, with a roster that had been sold off at the deadline. Baseball’s floor is not zero and it has never been anywhere near zero.

The ceiling behaves the same way. The best modern season, the 2001 Mariners’ 116 wins, still came with 46 losses. Both ends of the standings compress toward the middle over 162 games, which is the whole reason 162-0 is effectively impossible — and why an 0-162 season is not any closer.

For the era-by-era ranking of the worst seasons ever played, see the worst record in MLB history. For the complete three-team list of clubs that reached 120 defeats, see every MLB team that lost 120 games.