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1. Los Angeles Dodgers (98-64, first in NL West, 844 runs scored, 661 runs allowed).
They added a top-15 player and a top-five relief pitcher to the two-time defending World Champions.
The meta aspects of that aside -- you know I’m all for teams competing as hard as they can using any and all tools at their disposal, because their job is to win for their fans, no one else’s -- it makes it hard to do a Dodgers preview. Yes, there are age issues, same as the Phillies, but the Dodgers’ older core is better and their next group of players, your Will Smiths and Max Muncys, is better. The Dodgers worked in Andy Pages last year and will give Alex Freeland a chance to make the team younger this year.
If MLB were run like the English Premier League, where the champion is the team in first place at the end of the year, no month of max-intensity playoffs to follow, the Dodgers might win 115 games. They could win 120. I would love to watch that. I mentioned in Gaming that no team has won even 100 games since 2023, the product of the structural changes to the sport this decade. I think the Dodgers are a 108-win team that wants to win exactly one more game than it needs to to make the playoffs. As we saw last year, they didn’t seem to even flinch at playing in the first round.
The Dodgers have spent the last two years playing for October. They didn’t win 100 games in either season, but they went 24-8, a .750 winning percentage, in the playoffs and won two World Series. It’s hard to argue with that kind of success.
The main concern as they enter 2026 is the pitching. Blake Snell is out for two months, Roki Sasaki is a mess, and Emmet Sheehan is missing a lot of his 2025 velocity. Blake Treinen is somehow still here, likely to outlast all of us. The Dodgers have their usual melange of vaguely familiar names coming back from injury, and we’ll no doubt see Landon Knack and River Ryan and Gavin Stone this year when someone more famous goes on the IL with a blister or heartburn or nightmares.
The next important game the Dodgers play is more than six months away. Until then, enjoy this incredible collection of baseball talent, and try not to think about what it could do if the rules were better.
Upside: They could set the record for wins, but I’m long past going on #117Watch. They’d probably top out at 112-50 if they wanted to.
Downside: There’s a famous tweet about how the Dodgers look like a juggernaut in April and a jalopy in October. I guess it could happen again, but I’ve baked that it here and projected them at the bottom of their range. They won’t fall past 96-66.
Modest Proposal: Give Sasaki, who has looked good for two playoff appearances since signing with the Dodgers, the Roy Halladay treatment. Send him to A ball and let him start over, and don’t think about bringing him to the majors until he’s ready.
