By Fabian Ardaya / The Athletic
In the bacchanal of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ triumph last October, Shohei Ohtani approached Andrew Friedman, the team’s president of baseball operations.
For a decade, Friedman had crafted teams that had been the envy of baseball, but they managed just one World Series title. Ohtani, the franchise’s force multiplier, helped lead them to a second championship in his first year of a record-setting 10-year deal.
“Let’s do this nine more times,” Ohtani told Friedman during the World Series celebration.
It was as if, Friedman recalled with a chuckle, “this is easy.”
It has been 25 years since Major League Baseball crowned a repeat champion and about as long since that streak has had a true challenger. Since 2000, when the New York Yankees capped off their third consecutive championship, about half of the reigning champions missed the ensuing postseason. Just two — the 2001 Yankees and 2009 Philadelphia Phillies — even made it back to the World Series the following year.
Repeating hardly seemed fathomable.
The Dodgers (5-0 going into Monday’s night game at home against the Atlanta Braves) seek to buck that notion. They have far outspent any defending title-winner in recent memory, with a luxury tax payroll that has swelled to around $400 million. They have positioned themselves to maximize a window featuring three massive superstars: Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman.
“Our organization wants to kind of make their mark in baseball history for the next decade,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said during spring training.
As Roberts said in his opening address to the team, the Dodgers will be the hunter and not the hunted. They are aiming to topple the 29 other teams, as well as history.
“Our guys haven’t achieved a dynasty yet,” Roberts said. “That’s what they want. And that’s a good thing.”
External projection systems and betting markets are bullish on the Dodgers’ chances, and for good reason. But it is still “70, 75% likely that someone else will win the World Series,” the Dodgers CEO Stan Kasten reasoned in January, when asked about the team’s aggressive spending. “So obviously it hasn’t damaged the game competitively.”
FanGraphs’ playoff odds on opening day were at 77.4% that a non-Dodgers team will win it all. That it’s even that low is a tribute to the Dodgers’ talented roster. They added two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell, Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki and relievers Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates, among others.
The odds also reflect a reality that the Dodgers have learned all too well during 12 consecutive years of making the postseason, a stretch that has yielded four pennants and two titles.
“Baseball is probably the most competitive sport, even though people say otherwise,” the Dodgers’ Kiké Hernández said. “Very rarely does the best team win, where in other sports, talent can overmatch the competition. Here, for the most part, the hottest team is the one that wins.”
“Even if you have the best roster,” Tommy Edman said, “there’s still a chance that you run into someone that’s really hot.”
The Dodgers brushed up against that reality in October. They were a loss away from elimination during their National League Division Series against the San Diego Padres. Had that been it for them, it would have marked three consecutive first-round exits in the postseason after finishing with either 100 wins or baseball’s best record. Since their 2020 title, they had advanced to the National League Championship Series just once, running out of gas against the 2021 Atlanta Braves after winning more games (106) than any reigning champion since baseball went to divisions in 1969.
“It’s hard to do it once,” said Betts, who has won thrice.
The 2024 Dodgers overcame a crush of injuries to win it all. Nine pitchers opened the 2025 season on the injured list. Ohtani is coming off surgery to repair a labrum in his left shoulder while still working his way back to the mound from a second major surgery on his right elbow. Freeman, the World Series MVP, required surgery on the right ankle he hobbled on throughout October and missed both of the Dodgers’ games last week in Tokyo after aggravating the same rib he tore cartilage in during the NLDS against the Padres.
Max Muncy spent much of October getting treatment on his side after missing months last summer with an oblique strain and a displaced rib. Will Smith was playing through a bone bruise in his ankle that limited him going into this spring. Miguel Rojas was playing through a lower-body injury that required hernia surgery. Alex Vesia missed the NLCS with an intercostal issue. Both Evan Phillips and Michael Kopech will start the season on the injured list, which Friedman said at least partially fueled the team’s aggressive pursuit of Scott and Yates.
The additions, of course, did not stop there. Adding Snell reinforced a rotation worn down by injuries by the end of last year’s postseason. Winning the recruitment of Sasaki boosts the Dodgers’ future as much as their present. Signing Michael Conforto adds a proven bat who doesn’t have a World Series title to his name.
“What you’ve never had,” Roberts said, “you’re hungry to get.”
As Roberts soaked in the elation of a second title in five years, he looked for examples of what he hopes can be next. From Michael Jordan to Tiger Woods to Stephen Curry to Derek Jeter and beyond, he sought out greats who understand legacy and dynasty. Among Roberts’ early conversations this offseason was one with five-time NBA champion Magic Johnson, who remains part of the Dodgers’ ownership group.
The tone of those talks centered on the trio expected to carry this Dodgers’ window: Ohtani, Betts and Freeman.
“When you have your superstars, the carrot is still there for our superstars,” Roberts said. “When we have that, there’s No. 1, no complacency. I think that every great team, great player, needs a carrot. They’re all different.”
Roberts said individual goals collectively build toward a championship product. He laid out hypotheticals. Ohtani wants to win a third MVP in a row, this time in a triumphant return to the mound. Betts wants to prove he can play shortstop and win a second MVP award of his own. Freeman wants to continue his chase toward 3,000 career hits. Kershaw wants to become one of 20 men to reach 3,000 strikeouts.
“Everybody in here has different agendas,” Betts said. “Everybody here is in different places of life. But we all want to win.”
The 36-year-old Rojas said his carrot is a desire to prove that he can keep going and that he can still be an everyday player. Andy Pages sought to claim a spot on the opening day roster, working constantly in the Dodgers’ hitting lab to refine his swing.
“There are guys that are going to be free agents next year,” Betts said. “There are guys that are signed up for 10 years. There are guys that are trying to make the team. But at the end of the day, we all want to win a World Series.”
For the Dodgers to make history, they will have to snap the spell of 25 consecutive years without back-to-back World Series champions and enter themselves into an elite club.
“I think that for our club, our organization, our fan base, we want to be looked at as the best franchise in all of sports,” Roberts said. “How do you do that? You win championships. That’s how you do it.”