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THE LOS ANGELES DODGERS were expected to interruption baseball. Instead, they conscionable broke.
It's casual to hide however terrifying the Dodgers looked erstwhile Major League Baseball's 2025 play began six months ago, earlier the injuries that led to a large league-high 2,500-plus days missed by wounded players. Returning each their cardinal contributors, the defending World Series champions had emerged from escaped bureau with the champion starter connected the market, the champion reliever connected the marketplace and the champion pitching imaginable successful the world. They were not conscionable destined for greatness; they were bound to beryllium an all-time juggernaut, apical to bottom, eons beyond immoderate of their competitors.
Even the computers, by their quality conservative, bought it. The astir well-known of the game's projection systems, Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA, pegged the 2025 Dodgers for 104 wins. It wasn't 117, adjacent if the fig to acceptable the game's single-season grounds seemed wrong reach, but it was nevertheless telling. Not since 2004 had PECOTA forecast a play triumph full truthful gaudy.
A play expected to beryllium a coronation of the Dodgers has turned into thing antithetic altogether: a crapshoot. For the 2nd consecutive year, lone 2 teams successful MLB won 95 oregon much games -- and the Dodgers weren't adjacent 1 of them. And portion a 90-plus triumph play culminating successful a part rubric would beryllium a palmy twelvemonth for astir teams, it was acold abbreviated of L.A.'s lofty preseason expectations. After starting the twelvemonth with 8 consecutive wins, they spent overmuch of 2025 trying to find the champion mentation of themselves and failing. More than $70 cardinal of their grounds $500 million-plus payroll went to players during clip spent connected the injured list.
The Dodgers spent much connected those who weren't playing than Miami did connected its full payroll -- and finished lone 14 games up of the Marlins. It was a stark reminder that for each the offseason consternation implicit payroll disparity and each the fears of a caller superteam that would bring backmost the dynasty to a athletics that hasn't adjacent seen a back-to-back champion successful a quarter-century, shot successful 2025 offered acold much idiosyncratic excellence than it did squad dominance.
And determination the Dodgers did shine, with different MVP show from Shohei Ohtani, a expansive leap from Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a vocation twelvemonth from Will Smith and a breakout from Emmet Sheehan. Yet they finished with a 93-69 grounds -- five games worse than past twelvemonth and eight behind their 2022 squad. This year, astatine least, the full was little than the sum of its parts.
The Dodgers weren't the lone superteam to neglect to launch: The New York Mets, aft doling retired a grounds $765 cardinal to Juan Soto past winter, went connected a 3½-month-long clang retired that ended with the disgrace of an October spent astatine home. This season's parity opens the doorway for the anticipation of a chaotic period ahead. With a chaotic decorativeness to the regular play and without a wide squad to beat, the 2025 postseason is simply a blank canvas, primed for a squad to present its masterwork. From the upstart Cleveland Guardians, seeking their franchise's archetypal rubric since 1948, to a Dodgers squad inactive teeming with talent, anyone tin triumph a championship.
This year's equilibrium does not eradicate the anticipation of different superteams emerging successful the coming years. Two consecutive seasons of the sport's standings flattening out, though, does rise questions astir whether determination is immoderate awesome amid the noise.
Executives aren't acceptable to termination the superteam conscionable yet. Among the half-dozen high-ranking front-office unit queried by ESPN, however, immoderate mentation of the aforesaid question kept emerging: If the narration betwixt regular-season occurrence and postseason occurrence is statistically ins...
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