The truth of this Dodgers season was recently found in a place where all sports truths are clipped and tapered and styled into reality.
The barbershop.
Of course, the barbershop, where ball talk is real talk, and where the expectations around the Dodgers upcoming quest for a three-peat recently smothered me like a hot towel to the head.
I was sitting in the chair in mid-shave when a bald gentleman barged into the shop searching not for a cut, but a promise.
“Say it!” he shouted to me from just inside the door. “Say what everybody around here believes!”
What, that LeBron James is not a real Laker?
“No, say it about the Dodgers!” said the man, and he was serious. “Say that they have the best team in history and they’re going to win another championship! Say it, because that’s what everybody thinks!”
The shop quieted, chairs swiveled, and suddenly everyone was looking at me, at which point I said the one word I’ve never written in any of the last dozen or so Dodger preview columns.
“No.”
“No?” the man replied.
“No, I don’t think the Dodgers are going to win a third consecutive World Series championship.”
The man was clearly taken aback, some of the other patrons chuckling in surprise, the Dodger pulse of this town clearly resonating in a completely unusual fashion.
For the first time in forever, the ever-doubting Dodger nation is convinced this team is destined for a title.
It’s not like it used to be, back in the bad old days of crumbles and collapses. For the previous several years, Dodger fans have spent all spring pondering ways this great team would blow it. The playoff defeats by San Diego and Arizona burned into memories, and even after the Dodgers won it in 2024, their fan base invented scenarios in which they could not possibly repeat it.
But now that they have repeated it? Now that their roster has even gotten more stacked than the previous two seasons? The town is all in. The town expects more. The town is not only believing in a three-peat, they are counting on it.
As this barbershop bystander made clear, for the first time, only a prediction of another championship would be acceptable.
Sorry, but, um, no.
After all these years of picking the Dodgers to win, I’m formally picking them to lose. I don’t know exactly how, or precisely when, but it just feels like somebody, at some point, is going to finally end this run.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts hasn’t been on the losing end in the postseason since the team was swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2023 National League Division Series, above. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
I know this whole theory sounds crazy. Who’s better than them? Who’s even close to them? That genius Andrew Friedman has seemingly perfectly and tightly sewn together another title team.
But stretch that fabric over six months and look close at its stitching and there’s enough tiny holes to eventually blow the whole thing apart.
Despite mounds of evidence to the contrary, I just can’t bring myself to believe they have all the ingredients to become just the third franchise in baseball history to three-peat.
“They’re not going to win again?” the man shouted as he spun on his heels and marched out of the barbershop. “How can you say that?”
Plenty of reasons, actually.
Start with age.
This is suddenly an older team. They’re seasoned, they’re savvy, but they’re increasingly vulnerable. Too much age can knock you flat with injuries and fatigue. Hangovers are a young person’s game. Hangovers are hell on the old timers.
Did you know a dozen of the Dodgers key players are in their 30s? It happened so quickly, right? Freddie Freeman is 36, Max Muncy is 35, Mookie Betts and Teoscar Hernández are 33, and nobody is getting any younger.
Case in point: For the first time ever, this spring Freeman acknowledged that against his wishes, the Dodgers may not allow him to play every inning of every game. That’s one tiny, huge example.
One of the older players is 33-year-old Blake Snell, which leads to another potential problem, that being the starting rotation.
Did you realize that the staff leader in games started last year, behind Yoshinobu Yamamoto, was that broken-down fighter Clayton Kershaw?
He’s retired, and the rotation is as tenuous as ever. Snell is starting the season on the injured list. Roki Sasaki has had a shaky spring. Tyler Glasnow still has never pitched more than 134 innings. Yamamoto added extra innings to an already battered arm by pitching for Japan in the World Baseball Classic.
That leaves Shohei Ohtani as the only starter with no baggage, yet he continues to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders and, now that he’s the ripe old age of 31, one only hopes Superman can continue to fly.
How much will age be a factor for Dodgers left-hander Blake Snell, left, and right-hander Shohei Ohtani, right? (Brynn Anderson / Associated Press)
Here’s guessing the rotation will also miss the stability once offered by Kershaw, and that could be a problem, because here’s guessing the bullpen could be just as shaky.
Yes, they added the best free agent reliever in closer Edwin Díaz, and the fans will go wild at the first notes of Timmy Trumpet, but will the Dodgers have enough middle relief to get to him?
Tanner Scott is back. Blake Treinen is back. Potential chaos is back. The Dodgers will need more revelations like Will Klein and Justin Wrobleski to survive.
Speaking of survival, catcher Will Smith has played in 126 games or more four times in the last five years. Throw in 50 postseason games during that time and the physical toll on this World Series hero has been enormous. One can only hope that Dalton Rushing can improve on last year’s .204-hitting performance enough to allow Smith to take a break, because that becomes a big Dodger weakness if he doesn’t.
Rushing isn’t the only young Dodger with something to prove. After a strong regular season, Andy Pages managed just four hits in 51 postseason at-bats, an average which disappeared beneath his season-saving catch over Kiké Hernández in Game 7 of the World Series. One hopes he has rediscovered his swing, because that’s a problem if he hasn’t.
Andy Pages’ catch in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series will be remembered forever, but can he bounce back at the plate this season? (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Same with Betts. Last year’s struggles, which ended with a .138 average in the World Series, have been blamed on an early-season stomach ailment and all-season adjustment to shortstop. It’s unfair to doubt those reasons or his commitment to fixing it.
But it is fair to note that he’s coming off the worst two-season OPS since early in his career and that he must become the old Mookie for his teammates to remain the great Dodgers.
Yet even if all those question marks are positively answered, even if every perceived weakness becomes a real strength, even if these Dodgers have the best regular season in baseball history as so many have predicted…
They’ll still need one thing that seems impossible to buy or teach.
They’ll need the sort of incredible good fortune and great breaks that allowed them to win each of their last two titles.
Can any team be that lucky three years in a row?
Even the Dodgers admit that there were many key plays in the last two postseasons that could have gone the other way and changed history forever. Seemingly every one of those breaks broke for the Dodgers. How can this keep happening?
Is Aaron Judge going to drop another fly ball? Will Gerrit Cole forget to cover first base again?
Will a Philadelphia Phillies reliever lose his mind again? Will the Toronto Blue Jays melt under pressure in consecutive home games again? Will they have the baserunning blunders, the bullpen breakdowns, the terrible at-bats?
Does Miguel Rojas have another miracle in him? For that matter, does Freddie Freeman?
Bottom line, can any team create that many breaks three years in a row?
Los Angeles thinks the Dodgers can, and should, and will.
Sorry, barbershop, but I think not.
Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Read the full article here
