What more can you say about a team that has won back-to-back World Series and are the overwhelming favorites to make it a three-peat? The Dodgers have positioned themselves to become the first team since the turn-of-the-millennium Yankees to win three titles in a row, which would make them just the third team in over half a century to accomplish the feat. They have become the true evil empire of baseball, scoffing at the playoff crapshoot mentality, the envy of 29 other fan bases who wish the teams they supported were as fully invested in winning every single season.

2025 record: 93-69 (1st, NL West)
2026 FanGraphs projection: 99-63 (1st, NL West)

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Employing possibly the greatest all-around player in MLB history is always a decent place to start. Shohei Ohtani is going for his fourth-straight MVP and fifth in the last six seasons, and in fairness it’s difficult to pick out a legitimate challenger for his crown in the NL. No player in the sport is projected to be more valuable in 2026 — when combining his hitting and pitching projections, Ohtani’s projected fWAR of 8.4 clocks in at over a full win more than Aaron Judge.

As all-powerful as he is, the Dodgers have created an enviable supporting cast around their unicorn talent. Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts no longer at their peak? No worries, they’ll just sign the undisputed No. 1 free agent hitter for $60 million per year! And that’s not to say Freeman and Betts won’t be productive in 2026. Over the last two seasons, Freeman has settled in as roughly a four-win first baseman and can be expected to do the same this year, while Betts’ situation is slightly more murky. He is coming off a career-worst performance in a full season, ending the year marginally better than league average with the bat. All the same, 3.4 fWAR is still a borderline All-Star, it just fell short of the incredibly high standard he set in his first five seasons in LA — averaging a 146 wRC+ and roughly 6.0 fWAR/650 PA.

FanGraph Depth Charts projects a healthy rebound from Betts, he and Freeman expected to post a wRC+ somewhere in the 130s while combining to be worth between eight and nine wins. That’s still a roughly five-to-six win shortage relative to their peaks, but would you look at that, the Dodgers brought in Kyle Tucker to neatly make up that deficit. So what exactly does $60 million a year buy you these days? In King Tuck’s case, 33 home runs, a 142 wRC+, and 4.9 fWAR if Depth Charts is to be believed — all top-12 marks among hitters’ projections. Between Ohtani, Betts, and Tucker, the Dodgers should have three of the 12 most valuable players in MLB in 2026.

That doesn’t even take into account the rest of the supporting cast. Catcher Will Smith and center fielder Andy Pages are projected to be among the top-eight at their positions, ticketed to be worth more than three wins apiece. In fact, Hyeseong Kim is their only starter projected to produce less than 19 home runs, a 112 wRC+, and 2.1 fWAR.

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If there’s anything that’s going to trip them up, it’s on the pitching side. Yoshinobu Yamamoto established himself as a top-ten starting pitcher in the league last year and that should remain the case in 2026. However, behind their ace lies a ton of injury and downside risk. Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow are walking human Band-Aids, though the Dodgers’ plan for the pair appears to be to not care about the regular season as long as they are ready for the playoffs. Who knows how many innings the Dodgers will let Ohtani pitch? And while Emmet Sheehan had something of a breakout 2025 and Roki Sasaki found some stability after moving to the bullpen, I have heavy doubts over the pair’s ability to hold up in the rotation for an entire season.

The bullpen also features pretty wide error bars after the Dodgers had to rely on several relative unknowns in 2025 to make up for the unexpected regression of their high leverage arms. I suppose this underlies the reasoning behind LA signing Edwin Díaz away from the Mets on a three-year deal, finally cementing their closer role after several failed tries. I’m certainly not as optimistic as the projections that Tanner Scott can rebound from being replacement level in 2025, but I also wouldn’t be surprised to see them unearth some new hidden gems as they did last campaign.

A quick look at a pair of projection systems reveals just how much the Dodgers have separated themselves from the rest of the league. FanGraphs projects the Dodgers to win the division with a 99-63 record — they don’t project any other team in baseball to reach even 90 wins. They’ve been assigned a 99-percent playoff odds — the Mets are the next highest at 80.7-percent — and a whopping 26.8-percent chance to win the World Series, their closest chasers being the Mariners at 8.6-percent. Over at PECOTA things are even more stark. With a win-loss projection of 105-57, the Dodgers are projected to win 14 more games than the next-best team in the Mariners. Their 100-percent playoff odds are more than six points higher than the Mariners, while their 20.2-percent odds to win the World Series is almost five points higher than second-best Seattle.

It’s not that the Dodgers have improved that much on paper so much as two of their divisional challengers getting worse. The Diamondbacks were one of the surprise top sellers at last year’s trade deadline, dealing away three of the team’s top contributors in Eugenio Suárez, Josh Naylor, and Shelby Miller, downgrading to Nolan Arenado, Carlos Santana, and Paul Sewald to fill those roles. Meanwhile over in San Diego, focus is fixed on the looming team sale rather than the on-field product, which is how you get a starting rotation that could fail to feature a starter who throws 100 innings in 2026. We haven’t even played a game and yet the World Series is already the Dodgers’ to lose, and at this point I’m not sure I can spot a team that can steal their crown away from them.