The Dodgers<\/a> have fielded some great teams over the last 14 years: World Series champions in 2020, 2024 and 2025; National League champions in 2017 and 2018; and 12 NL West champions.<\/p>\nNone of them were as talented as the team they have now.<\/p>\n
Their lineup consists of three former Most Valuable Players in Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. Four others have made All-Star teams, including Kyle Tucker, their new $240 million right fielder.<\/p>\n
The stage is set for Ohtani to have the greatest season of a career in which he has already won four MVP awards. At 31, he is at his physical peak. Now 2 \u00bd years removed from his most recent elbow operation, he should be able to play both ways without any limitations.<\/p>\n
The Dodgers\u2019 Shohei Ohtani and his teammates will look for their third consecutive World Series crown this season. MLB Photos via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Ohtani should compete for the Cy Young Award, but he has legitimate competition on his own team. The Dodgers\u2019 rotation has three other legitimate candidates for the award in Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow. Snell will start the season on the injured list with inflammation. That would be a major concern for 29 teams but not the Dodgers.<\/p>\n
Their bullpen was a problem last year. They overcame the shortcoming by moving some of their starters into relief roles in the postseason. Roki Sasaki became the team\u2019s closer. Glasnow pitched three games out of the bullpen. Yamamoto pitched the final 2 \u2154 innings of Game 7 of the World Series.<\/p>\n
The Dodgers addressed the issue this winter by acquiring the best reliever on the free agent market: three-time All-Star Edwin Diaz.<\/p>\n
In addition to returning to the nucleus of their team, the two-time defending champions added the No. 1 hitter and No. 1 reliever available.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The talent alone would make the Dodgers the favorites to win the World Series, but their culture is what has given them an air of invincibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of the hallmark of our club,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cNothing really fazes us. Our guys don\u2019t let anything affect them, whether it\u2019s travel, the schedule, the opponent, whether there\u2019s unforeseen circumstances. We will go out there and play baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Dodgers begin their quest for a third straight World Series title Thursday against the Diamondbacks. MLB Photos via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The quality explains how they reversed a series deficit against the more talented Padres in the 2024 postseason. Or how they came back from a mediocre start by a depleted Ohtani on the mound against the Blue Jays in Game 7 of the World Series last year.<\/p>\n
Success hasn\u2019t affected them, either. The Dodgers now have several players in their mid- to late-30s who have made tens of millions of dollars. But none of them sound as if they\u2019re ready to wind down their careers.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for the California Morning Report newsletter\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCalifornia’s top news, sports and entertainment delivered to your inbox every day.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Teoscar Hernandez dropped weight. Betts started working with Yamamoto\u2019s personal trainer as part of an effort to return to MVP-caliber form. Glasnow packed on weight with hopes he could avoid injury and have the best season of his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, it kind of starts from top-down,\u201d Muncy said. \u201cYou have an ownership and front office that is making a statement to its players when they bring in new guys every single year: \u2018Hey, we\u2019re not complacent with just winning one. We want to keep winning. We want to keep performing well.\u2019 That, in itself, sends a message to everyone else that, hey, no one cares that you won one. This is a completely new year. Your goal is to win this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
An unclear future should only increase that urgency. Team owners are pushing for a luxury tax, and players will almost certainly be locked out once the season ends. When the sport resumes, the Dodgers could be playing in an entirely different economic environment. Their financial edge could be reduced by several orders of magnitude.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s no point in looking ahead. The Dodgers have now, and now could be the start of a season in which they scale heights that no team has ever scaled before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The winterlong celebration is over. Opening Day is finally here. This will be a season opener unlike any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2391],"tags":[537,5,2178,57,4,3226,185,1039],"class_list":{"0":"post-645070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-athletics","8":"tag-athletics","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-mlb-athletics","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-world-series"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116296994938598367","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}