The Dodgers’ seven month spring training is officially over.
Los Angeles’ 2025 season, for all intents and purposes, begins Friday night. The surging San Diego Padres — suddenly one game up in the National League West for the first time since April 23 — are in town for what should be another memorable notch in a rivalry that’s blossomed into baseball’s best. The defending champs, meanwhile, are reeling, licking their wounds from an embarrassing series sweep in Anaheim. It was the first time in Freeway Series history that the Angels went 6-0 against their northern foes in a season.
Hailed, hated and hyped over the winter as a team for the ages, these Dodgers have fallen short of those lofty expectations, so far. The most expensive roster in MLB history, a roster that was framed as a referendum of sorts on the state of money in baseball, has been an oft-injured, underperforming husk of itself.
Panic feels premature, but concern feels warranted.
Mookie Betts and Teoscar Hernández, cornerstones of last year’s championship team, have been middling offensively. Betts appears to have turned something of a corner, but still has just 12 homers on the year. Hernández, who re-signed in Los Angeles on a three-year deal over the winter, has a .644 OPS since June 1. Freddie Freeman has also been mediocre over the past two months after a scintillating April and May. Max Muncy has rebounded from a horrible start, but injuries have made this a very disjointed season for the keen-eyed third baseman.
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The only Dodger hitters performing at or above expectations are outfielder Andy Pages, catcher Will Smith and, obviously, Shohei Ohtani. Any concerns about Ohtani losing a step at the dish after returning to the mound have been resoundingly put to sleep; he has 18 home runs since his first pitching outing of the year on June 17.
Ohtani, remarkably, has also been the team’s most impactful starting pitcher of late. He threw 4 1/3 innings against the Angels on Wednesday, his longest outing of the season. Earlier in the season, there was skepticism whether Ohtani The Pitcher would be utilized come October. Now, he looks like a Game 1 starter.
And even though the Dodgers are getting healthier on the mound — Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell are both back — the rotation’s injury woes are a huge reason for the club being in second place in the NL West. Ninety-six MLB pitchers have thrown at least 100 innings this season; just one, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, is a Los Angeles Dodger. The bullpen, too, has been a bit of a revolving door. Underperformance from offseason signings Blake Treinen, Kirby Yates and Tanner Scott hasn’t helped. That overall lack of pitching continuity, though it may not be a problem moving forward, has been a barrier all season long.
Throughout the year, the Dodgers’ organizational philosophy has, understandably, prioritized the long game. It’s parade or bust. Nobody in a position of power at Chavez Ravine is, or has ever been, hellbent on crafting a regular-season juggernaut. The club was passive about Ohtani’s pitching rehab timeline. They continue to employ a decidedly conservative approach to bullpen usage and workload. A surprisingly quiet trade deadline only reaffirmed this “trust the process” mentality. Every decision, every transaction is geared toward putting the club in the best possible position when the real season starts.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it’s a huge reason why the Dodgers are here.
The cold hard truth is that only October matters. The MLB season is a marathon of survival followed by a sprint of utter chaos. Everybody in Dodgerland — coaches, players, execs — knows this. If the Dodgers stumble into a wild-card spot, catch fire in the playoffs and lift another trophy, nobody will rue a sluggish summer or lack of a division crown. Last year’s team had similar moments of worry — remember this triple play — and look how that turned out.
And yet, the math has gotten uncomfortable, the Padres unavoidable. On July 3, San Diego was nine games adrift, tied with the San Francisco Giants in third place. Their odds to win the division, according to FanGraphs, were at 0.6%. The Dodgers, meanwhile, sat comfortably at 98.2%. That figure has since dwindled to 61.8. If the schneid continues and the Dodgers are forced to settle for a wild card, that won’t singlehandedly doom their season, but it will push them into an extra round of particularly volatile postseason baseball.
Perhaps the Dodgers, with the stakes elevated and the light flicked on, rise to the occasion this weekend. That, given the talent and experience on the roster, would shock absolutely no one. It remains far too early to call this team a disaster or even a disappointment.
And yet, this 2025 Dodgers season has undeniably not gone to plan. Depending on how things go this weekend, the train could fly even further off the tracks.
Let’s talk again Monday.
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