The Los Angeles Dodgers, the defending World Series champions and Major League Baseball’s most successful team over the past decade, continued their busy offseason over the weekend. First, they successfully wooed Japanese ace Roki Sasaki to take less money to join his Team Japan teammates Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Then, they added left-hander Tanner Scott to a lucrative four-year contract.
With less than a month to go until pitchers and catchers report, the Dodgers appear primed to enter the season once again considered the favorites to capture the title.
Naturally, that got us to thinking about what it would take for the Dodgers to not just fall short of the World Series — any seasoned baseball observer knows there are few guarantees so far as postseason success goes — but to miss the playoffs entirely.
Below, then, we’ve highlighted four dynamics that, in conjunction, would result in one of the biggest team-level disappointments in recent memory. (You may recall that we conducted a similar brainstorming session last year.) A word before proceeding: we’re not saying the Dodgers will or are likely to miss the playoffs. This is simply an examination of what it would take for that to come into question.
If you’re a Dodgers fan, you should view it as a compliment of sorts; we’re not writing these kinds of pieces for teams with obvious routes out of contention.
Now, onward.
1. The injury bug
Health is the unseen mover of every baseball season. It shapes playoff pictures, roster moves, award races. Anything and everything the game has to offer is impacted by health, yet it’s impossible to predict in any meaningful way. In turn, that makes it the ultimate wild card for every team, and the most obvious potential foil to the Dodgers — a team that’s banking a lot on pitchers, like Tyler Glasnow and Roki Sasaki, who have struggled with their fair share of durability woes in recent years.
Consider how, just last season, the Atlanta Braves had to play most of their games without ace Spencer Strider and reigning Most Valuable Player Award recipient Ronald Acuña Jr. Understandably, the Braves underperformed without two of their best players. They still made the playoffs, but it took until the season’s final game to get in — a far cry from what most expected from that roster heading into the spring.
Of course, it’s not really about how many injuries the Dodgers suffer — it’s more about who gets hurt. To wit, no team tallied more days lost to the IL last season than the Dodgers did, according to Baseball Prospectus’ database. They still won 98 games and the World Series. For the Dodgers’ chances to be seriously dented by injury alone, they’d need to suffer from a Braves-like run of suboptimal dice rolls.
2. Leaky bullpen
The easiest way for a good team to underperform is to play poorly in late-and-close situations — specifically, to field a bullpen incapable of holding onto small leads.
On paper, the Dodgers appear to have a good relief corps. There’s Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips, Tanner Scott, Michael Kopech, and so on. It’s hard to foresee the Dodgers receiving below-average production from that group. A more realistic doomsday scenario has them melting down more often than expected based on their numbers.
For an example of that, look no further than the 2024 Chicago Cubs. Chicago’s bullpen had the 10th best ERA in all the majors. Yet they also ranked fifth in meltdowns, a FanGraphs-based statistic that uses Win Probability Added to judge how much a bullpen contributed to/against their team’s chances of victory. The Cubs went 23-28 in one-run games, missing the postseason by six games in the process.
Again, the Dodgers falling victim to some unfortunate late-inning sequencing on its own probably wouldn’t be enough to leave them on the outside looking in.
3. Stars hit decline phase
Compared to the two options above, this one feels more tangible. After all, every season seems to contain a few unexpected declines.
At absolute minimum, it’s worth being aware that the Dodgers’ lineup is getting long in the tooth: the current projected starting nine features just one player who’ll finish the season on the sunny side of 30 years old: second baseman Hyeseong Kim.
Freddie Freeman is entering his age-35 campaign; Max Muncy his age-34; Mookie Betts, Teoscar Hernández, and Michael Conforto their age-32 and so on. It’s not out of the question that at least a few of those players play worse than expected. Heck, it’s possible that a few play much worse than expected.
Now, there’s a big difference between Betts cratering and Conforto doing it. The point here is just that the best-laid plans can and often do go awry. Were a steeper-than-expected decline to plague a few key individuals … well, who knows. But if you’re looking for how the Dodgers might underperform, this is one idea to circle.
4. Other teams get lucky
The fourth and final factor has to do with the other National League teams overperforming their expectations, much the way the San Francisco Giants did in 2021 when they won 107 games and the NL West crown. (The Dodgers laughed last that fall, defeating the Giants 3-2 in the best-of-five NL Division Series.)
The expanded postseason means the Dodgers have more margin for error on this front. Even if they were to finish second or third in the West — and the latter seems highly unlikely unless several of the possibilities above unfold in concert — they would still have a legitimate pathway into the tournament. Several other NL teams would have to outkick their coverage for there to be a realistic chance of L.A. missing out.
That isn’t to suggest it’s impossible that the Dodgers are absent come October. There is no such thing as a fait accompli in baseball. It does suggest, however, that these Dodgers once again look as close to invincible as any team in recent memory.
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