While the Los Angeles Dodgers are rightfully the favorite to win their third consecutive World Series title, it’s still baseball – and there’s more parity in this year’s league than what meets the eye.
After consecutive World Series titles from the Los Angeles Dodgers and an offseason free agent signing of Kyle Tucker, fans of the league’s 29 other teams collectively groaned as the sport’s most dominant franchise put themselves in a position to be the league’s team to beat once again.
Last week, those feelings by many fans were only solidified as the Dodgers outbid the surprisingly passive Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers to acquire Tarik Skubal, the two-time reigning AL Cy Young Award winner who now joins Yoshinobu Yamamoto as the front-liners of the team’s rotation.
Then, in the last few days, we were reminded of something fans have to seemingly be reacquainted with every year – this is a pretty damn unpredictable sport.
Since acquring Skubal on Sunday, the Dodgers have not won a game – slumping to a season-long six-game losing streak that included sweeps at the hands of the Boston Red Sox in Los Angeles and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.
While a small patch of games in early August is hardly indicative of what the two-time defending world champions will look like come October, it’s a timely reminder that there are no guarantees in sports – especially in baseball.
Much has been made by fans across the league regarding the Dodgers’ outright dominance that stretches far beyond their back-to-back World Series titles. Los Angeles has not missed the postseason since 2012, and it doesn’t look all that likely that they’ll fall short of October before the end of the decade. The club has won 12 of the 13 last NL West division titles, only falling short in 2021 when they finished a single game behind one of the flukiest baseball teams in recent memory – a 107-55 San Francisco Giants squad.
Although the Dodgers won the sprint to the finish line in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, their struggles in the playoffs following full seasons persisted until the addition of Shohei Ohtani before the 2024 campaign – which has made the Dodgers a juggernaut that the league has not seen since the New York Yankees of the turn of the century.
Yet this season, the widespread expectation that the World Series is a wrap is antithetical to what baseball is, especially when we know a few October surprises are on the horizon (and no, not that kind of October surprise).
One thing that should not be lost on this Dodgers team is its age – dominant as they are, this is objectively an older baseball team, even if the effects of aging stars isn’t exactly apparent across the whole roster. While Max Muncy and Freddie Freeman have put up excellent seasons that have been bolstered by a breakout campaign from the homegrown Andy Pages, there are a few other weaknesses that have emerged during the team’s recent offensive slump.
The 2026 season marks the second consecutive year that Mookie Betts has not been himself, posting an 88 OPS+ that is at least slightly bolstered by a 4-for-5 showing in Wednesday’s game against the Cubs. While Betts found some momentum down the stretch and still finished 2025 with a 105 OPS+ and 4.9 WAR (aided by leading the NL in defensive WAR), this year has been a season-long offensive struggle for the future Hall of Famer – who will need to get it going for the Dodgers to make some more magic in October.
Perhaps the biggest question mark affecting the Dodgers heading into the postseason is Shohei Ohtani’s availability on the mound. While Ohtani’s 8-2 record with a 1.79 ERA this year represent the best pitching output of his career thus far, the team remains without a timeline for his return to pitching – which could greatly impact how the club’s rotation looks in a short playoff series.
So if not the Dodgers, then who?
Conventional wisdom would suggest the Milwaukee Brewers, who currently hold MLB’s best record, as the prime contender to the Dodgers. Yet after a trade deadline where only Dustin May and a pair of relievers were added, Milwaukee will have to rely heavily on the pieces already in place, which certainly could be enough if Jacob Misiorowski remains healthy through the rest of the season.
Even then, the Brewers’ lineup, which has the fewest home runs in baseball, would also be reliant on a bit of an October power surge to outlast the Dodgers in a series – something they came up short on in 2025 as they were swept out of the NLCS.
It’s hard to rule out the steady Atlanta Braves, who have flown under the radar this season while remaining in firm charge of the NL East. With a solid rotation anchored by Chris Sale and a lineup that still has not approached its full potential, the Braves have the weapons to take down Los Angeles in a series – and several players on the team certainly have memories of their NLCS upset victory in 2021.
The Dodgers’ threats from within the division appear to be diminished quite a bit in 2026. The San Diego Padres, while aggressive buyers at the deadline, remain in need of a late-season push to make it into a Wild Card spot, while the Arizona Diamondbacks are in a similar position.
The Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs could of course match up with the Dodgers in the playoffs, with both teams having particular advantages. Philadelphia would be in excellent shape to equal the Dodgers’ rotation with a three-headed monster of Cristopher Sánchez, Jesús Luzardo and Zack Wheeler, while the Cubs, led by NL MVP contender Pete Crow-Armstrong have a lineup that has been right near the top of the league’s stats alongside the Dodgers all year.
When it comes to the junior circuit, the parity has perhaps never been as relevant – evidenced by the Tigers moving Tarik Skubal despite them being just 2.5 games outside of a playoff spot at the time of the trade.
There are just three teams in the American League that are six or more games above .500, and they all reside in the AL East – as the Rays, Yankees and Boston Red Sox lead the way. Entering play on Aug. 6, the Chicago White Sox lead the AL Central with a 59-54 record, while the Houston Astros lead the AL West despite being just 59-57.
The Dodgers’ stiffest competition certainly seems like it will come from the NL, but a rematch of the 2020 Fall Classic doesn’t seem out of the question – as the Rays have a rotation that could contend with the Dodgers, making their failure to acquire Skubal all the more of a headscratcher.
The team that provides the Dodgers with their most significant challenge could also be a club I haven’t even mentioned, making it worth acknowledging that the Dodgers’ path to two straight World Series titles has not been a bed of roses.
By the way many MLB fans talk about the Dodgers, you would think that their dominance is equal to that of the 2010’s Golden State Warriors and the Brady-Belichick era New England Patriots, both of whom had an aura of inevitability about them that is impossible to replicate.
The results for those teams speak for themselves – the Warriors sailed to three championships in the back half of the 2010’s, none of which came in the season that they recorded a 73-9 record. Their 2017 postseason remains perhaps the most dominant of all-time, finishing 16-1 en route to the NBA title.
The Dodgers, on the other hand, faced elimination in each of the previous two postseasons – in both cases needing to win two consecutive games to close out a series. After being pushed to the brink by the division-rival Padres in the 2024 NLDS, the Dodgers won twice in Toronto to close out last year’s World Series after falling behind 3-2 – triumphant, comeback victories that do not at all indicate unfettered dominance.
While Los Angeles has every tool needed to cruise through the postseason, it’s more than likely that the club will run into some resistance at some point along the way – only enhanced by the fact that the Dodgers’ dominance is about to play a central role in the almost certain lockout that is looming this offseason.
Ultimately, baseball is and always has been beautifully unpredictable. If it wasn’t, the Seattle Mariners would have won it all in 2001 and the Dodgers would be searching for the seventh or eighth ring in a row. It’s a sport that has a culture and history built on the premise of unlikely heroes – with Miguel Rojas etching his name into the books as one of those heroes last year.
Every team wants to be the one to dethrone the Dodgers in the postseason. In that quest, some more unlikely heroes may just emerge.
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