Coming off a World Series title, the Los Angeles Dodgers may have a better roster now than they did last fall, leading to a worry among baseball fans that the new Evil Empire won’t have a hard time going back-to-back in 2025.

The Dodgers were active during the offseason. Very active. More active than a lot of teams that should’ve been more active. More active than many would’ve liked to see.

LA re-signed outfielder Teoscar Hernandez. They also signed free-agent outfielder Michael Conforto and free-agent reliever Kirby Yates. The club’s three bigger offseason moves were signing two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, top-tier left-handed reliever Tanner Scott, and Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki.

In other words, the rich got richer.

There’s another addition to the Dodgers, too. Shohei Ohtani will be back on the mound in 2025. Ohtani, the reigning NL MVP, has a career 3.01 ERA in 86 starts. He didn’t pitch in 2024 after undergoing elbow surgery in 2023. His presence on the mound will only add to an already talented Dodgers pitching staff.

Is there really a need to even play out 2025?

Well, yes. And not just because baseball fans want to watch the game they love so much. But because there’s no reason to believe the Dodgers will repeat in 2025.

In fact, you heard it here first: the Dodgers aren’t going to repeat as World Series champions.

Yes, the Dodgers will be good. They may be great. They may be historically great. But winning back-to-back World Series is hard. Not only is it hard to repeat, but the best team on paper doesn’t always win. The team with the most regular-season wins doesn’t always hoist the Commissioner’s Trophy every year, either.

The last team to win consecutive World Series championships was the original Evil Empire. The New York Yankees won three straight world titles from 1998 to 2000. Furthermore, only four – two were the Dodgers (2020 and 2024) – of the last 10 World Series championship teams won the Fall Classic after racking up the most regular-season victories.

Even scanning the Dodgers’ own history offers a glimpse into how hard it is to win it all.

LA has become the golden standard in baseball. Since 2013, the Dodgers have made the postseason every year, winning 11 division titles along the way. The only time they didn’t win the NL West came in 2021 when they finished second, by one game, to the 107-win San Francisco Giants. 

Of their 12 straight postseason runs, seven have lasted until the NLCS for the Dodgers. Only four have lasted until the World Series. And just two have ended with a world title.

For more context, the Dodgers have won 95-plus games six times over the last 11 full, 162-game seasons. Again, they have two world championships over that span. They win a lot. They tend to be one of, if not the best, teams in the sport year after year. But the Dodgers don’t always win it all.

Yes, they’re the favorites right now, will likely be the favorites for most of the regular season, and could be the favorites come October. But between now and then, there’s a lot of baseball to be played. Too much baseball to just anoint the Dodgers as future World Series champions.

They shouldn’t be anointed as such anyway. Because the Dodgers aren’t going to win the World Series this year.

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