ESNY’s 2024 MLB Preview: Enter the Los Angeles Dodgers Dynasty

Can anyone stop the Los Angeles Dodgers?

No, that’s a serious question. Ever since capping Shohei Ohtani’s first LA season (and third MVP year) with winning the World Series, the Dodgers have been all gas and no brakes. Their team is already stacked, with three MVPs in the top third of the lineup alone.

Nope, doesn’t matter. That’s not stacked enough. Re-sign a key power hitter in Teoscar Hernandez? Check. Beef up some already untouchable pitching depth with Blake Snell? Check. Run the table in the offseason and become baseball’s new supervillain?

Survey says: Check.

We noted last year that adding Shohei Ohtani meant the Dodgers were serious about building a dynasty. A 98-win championship season later, it turns out we were right.

Beware, baseball fans. These Los Angeles Dodgers could very well be MLB’s version of WCW legend Eric Bischoff. They’re back, and better than ever.

Greatest Addition: Roki Sasaki. The rich get richer, the rest of baseball just watches. The Dodgers pulled off something of an international free agency coup once again, this time adding the Japanese righty Sasaki despite strong offers from both the Padres and Yankees. Better yet, because he’s still just 23, Sasaki was only allowed to sign a minor league deal. The catch, the Dodgers gave him a $6.5 million signing bonus.

Sasaki has been hyped even more than his fellow countryman and new teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto. He pitched a 19-strikeout perfect game in Japan in 2022, and then followed that with eight perfect innings in his next start. He has a 2.02 ERA and 11.4 strikeouts per nine innings (K/9) in three years with the Chiba Lotte Marines.

Sasaki figures to be part of a six-man rotation featuring both Ohtani and Yamamoto, but he does carry some risk. He has a history of small arm injuries and has never really worked a full season. The 129.1 innings he pitched in 2022 are his career high. But given the reward, the Dodgers rightfully took their chance.

Greatest Loss: Walker Buehler. You never like to lose a homegrown talent, especially a talented arm like Buehler’s. He signed a one-year deal with the Red Sox after struggling to a 1-6 record and 5.38 ERA coming back from his second Tommy John surgery. Boston gave him $21 million guaranteed and an option for 2026, too rich for even the Dodgers’ blood.

Except was it? Buehler debuted and stumbled through a cup of coffee in LA in 2017, but then became a full-time starter the following year and led a combined no-hitter. He owns a 3.27 ERA and 3.50 FIP for his career, and even settled to post a 3.60 mark in the postseason last year.

Coming back from two Tommy John surgeries rarely yields positive results, so the Dodgers probably made the right call. Even so, it’s sad to see Buehler take off the Dodger Blue.

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Greatest Strength: The Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Machine. I’ll say this time and time again and don’t care if I’m a broken record. The Los Angeles Dodgers are, hands-down, the best run organization in baseball. Team president Andrew Friedman is just a software upgrade to an already elite system.

Consider this. Since the official end of the O’Malley Era in 1998, the Dodgers have had three owners: Fox Entertainment group, Frank McCourt, and the current Guggenheim Baseball Management ownership.

The Dodgers have only won two World Series over that stretch, but still turn out quality players. They’re still active in the international market. Their player development remains top-of-the-line. There really is no team that does baseball like the Los Angeles Dodgers.

A baseball machine like no other indeed.

Greatest Weakness: Unsustainable pitching model. Great as the Dodgers are, there is one key flaw in their system. When it comes to pitching, they have one approach: velocity, velocity, and more velocity until the arms have none left to give. This explains how whenever a key Los Angeles arm gets injured, the Dodgers pull a pitching prospect out of nowhere and hand him the ball.

That isn’t to say this is solely a Dodgers problem. MLB released a study in December confirming that “chasing higher velocity and better ‘stuff’” leads to more injuries. And yet, nothing’s changed.

This applies to the Dodgers and all other teams: pitching development that only prioritizes velocity is not only unsustainable, but a time bomb. Remember how recovering from a second Tommy John was rough on Walker Buehler? Shohei Ohtani is back on the mound after his own second procedure.

Will the Dodgers be ready if they suffer a sudden avalanche of pitching injuries? Be it this year or five years from now, we’ll soon find out.

Is a new Los Angeles Dodgers Dynasty on deck? We’re not in the business of predicting outcomes at the start of a season, so we’ll meet halfway. As of right now, the 2025 World Series is the Los Angeles Dodgers’ to lose. The lineup is full of bats who can change games with one swing and the pitching is so deep that LA will use a six-man rotation out of necessity.

The Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres have reloaded accordingly, but it’s still not enough. The Dodgers are just too loaded top to bottom. Barring an injury onslaught, expect LA to run away with the NL West in the summer.

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