Because nothing binds us in human solidarity like the golden threads of Search Engine Optimization, it’s time for this space, which is notionally devoted to Major League Baseball coverage, to talk about the upcoming Super Bowl. Indeed, on Sunday the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles will meet in a Bowl overflowing with Super, and at stake is Utmost American Football Glory.
This, naturally enough, brings us to the Los Angeles Dodgers by way of those aforementioned Chiefs. The Chiefs are in the Super Bowl for the fifth time in six years, and in related matters they’re aiming for their third consecutive belt and title. This general notion of repeat champions brings us back to the Dodgers, winners of the 2024 World Series, their chances of doing it again in 2025, and the frankly grim recent history of MLB squadrons aiming to repeat as champs of the sport.
Let’s hit that last part first. No MLB team has repeated as World Series champions since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees. Those Yankees came tantalizingly close to winning four straight World Series, but the Arizona Diamondbacks edged them in the white-knuckled 2001 World Series, a true classic of the genre. So it’s been roughly a quarter-century since anyone in MLB has successfully defended the title. For comparison’s sake, let’s note that over that same span, the NFL has yielded two repeat champions (the Chiefs over the last two years and the 2003-04 New England Patriots). The NBA, meantime, has had four repeat champs since 2000. Maybe, though, MLB’s “drought” will end in 2025?
This topic merits exploration on two fronts — first, how well positioned the Dodgers are to repeat and, second, an acknowledgement of just how hard it is to repeat in a sport like baseball and a league like MLB.
On the first point, let it be said that the powerhouse Dodgers haven’t rested on their laurels. Ownership continues to invest in the product at impressive levels — impressive even in light of the franchise’s vast resources — and lead decision-maker Andrew Friedman has been in foot-on-gas mode for years upon years. Winning the team’s first full-season title since 1988 hasn’t weakened any of that.
This is a team that won 98 games last season and made the playoffs for the 12th straight year. What’s perhaps more amazing is that the 2024 model may have been the worst Dodgers team of the last six years or so, at least as far as regular-season success goes. This is a modern baseball dynasty, full stop. With superstars and stars like Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, and Will Smith back for more in 2025 (and beyond), the Dodgers with their World Series trophy could’ve justified taking a pass on the current offseason and still probably graded out as a World Series favorite.
Instead, Friedman and company positioned the Dodgers as one of the most active clubs of the winter. They signed Blake Snell to a nine-figure free-agent contract, and they won the bidding for coveted right-hander Roki Sasaki out of Japan. The Dodgers also re-upped with slugging outfielder Teoscar Hernández, added a pair of lockdown relievers to the fold in Kirby Yates and Tanner Scott, and fortified the lineup with Michael Conforto and Hyeseong Kim. This is to say nothing of Tommy Edman’s extension.
The result is a Dodgers team that figures to improve upon its 2024 win total and trot out a rotation — really, two rotations — of uncommon depth (don’t forget that Ohtani will be returning to the mound in 2025, possibly as soon as May). Sure, injuries can and probably will strike that rotation, but you’ll recall that the Dodgers barged through the entire postseason with, oh, roughly two-and-a-half healthy starting pitchers. This is, yet again, the best team on paper, and the margin probably isn’t all that close. It would be a minor baseball miracle if the Dodgers don’t win the NL West again and don’t earn a first-round bye. It would be likewise surprising if they don’t finish with the best record in all of MLB. That’s all another way of saying that the Dodgers will almost certainly make the playoffs in 2025 and seem a strong bet to go into those playoffs as the best team, depending upon how injury situations look by the time October arrives. All of that means a real shot at becoming the first team to repeat since those turn-of-the-millennium Yankees.
How much of a shot? The Dodgers’ betting odds of winning the World Series in 2025 will vary based on your source for such information, but +300 is currently listed at DraftKings Sportsbook. That, as it turns out, would be the best preseason odds for a reigning World Series winner since … the 2001 Yankees.
Here, though, is where history comes in. The 2025 Dodgers may be our best shot at a repeat champ in a long time, but that doesn’t mean they have a particularly good shot. Since 1985, the team with the best preseason odds of winning the World Series has gone to accomplish that feat just seven times. On that front, here’s what’s become of the reigning World Series champs ever since the 2000 Yankees became the last to repeat:
- Two of them lost in the World Series.
- Seven of them lost in the League Championship Series.
- Two of them lost in the league Division Series.
- Thirteen of them missed the playoffs altogether.
But what about the best teams in baseball – i.e., those like the 2024 Dodgers and possibly the 2025 Dodgers who enter the playoffs with the best record in MLB? Since 1995, when MLB’s postseason first expanded to three rounds, just seven teams have notched the best record in the regular season and then gone on to win the World Series. The 2024 Dodgers were the first team to pull it off since the 2018 Red Sox (no, we’re not counting the 2020 season because one should never count the 2020 season). Even the best team going into the playoffs doesn’t often complete their mission. This gets at the nature of a frankly weird sport like baseball, which has a great deal of structural reliance on random outcomes. Throw in the extra rounds of the postseason, which present more opportunities for favorites to be toppled, and you have a game and a playoff format built to thwart favorites.
Circling back to those 2025 Dodgers odds above, you always take the field over any one team in this sport. That’s just how it goes. It’s not an accident or wild aberration that it’s been so long since a World Series winner repeated. That’s baseball, and in a real way it’s those teams that do repeat, particularly in the modern era of MLB, who are the aberrations. Maybe the 2025 Dodgers will turn out to be just such a thing. More likely, though, is that they’ll wind up not having that in common with the Chiefs.
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