Are the Dodgers the best baseball team ever?
Photo courtesy of Mogami Kariya / Wikimedia Commons
Shohei Ohtani continues to shine as a key piece of a dominant Dodgers roster, helping lead L.A. to a scorching 9-2 start as the team makes its case as one of the best in MLB history.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are widely considered the best team in Major League Baseball (MLB). The Dodgers were the best team in the MLB last season with 98 wins and ended up beating the New York Yankees 4-1 in the World Series. The craziest part is that the Dodgers got drastically better. With key pitching additions and valuable help on the offensive side, the Dodgers look even better than their World-Series-winning roster last year. With the Dodgers' very impressive start to the season, it is worth considering whether the Dodgers are the best baseball team ever assembled.
This is a loaded statement. Baseball is well over 100 years old, and hundreds of elite teams have made their mark on history. With that said, there are a lot of factors that need to be considered with this present-day Dodgers team. Baseball is arguably at its most competitive point from a talent perspective, and the team is simply unbelievable against all odds.
The Dodgers have three former Most Valuable Player (MVP) positional players on their roster who are all still playing at that caliber. Mookie Betts is an unbelievable two-way player for the Dodgers, Freddie Freeman is one of the best-hitting first basemen of his time, and Shohei Ohtani is arguably the best player in all of baseball.
The Dodgers even have solid bats behind the three superstars in their lineup. Tommy Edman has proven to be a solid addition that can shine in big moments, Teoscar Hernandez is coming off of a thirty-three home run season, and Will Smith is batting a ridiculous .423 at the time of this writing. You can go on and on with this Dodgers lineup, and the most insane part of it all is that it is not even the team's strongest point.
The Dodgers' strongest point of their roster is the pitching staff. In the last two years, the Dodgers have signed Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki, Tyler Glasnow, and Shohei Ohtani as starters in their rotation. That is a full five-man rotation, all signed in the last two years. Those names do not even consider the existing Dodgers pitchers from before 2023, including Dustin May, Tony Gonsolin, and former MVP Clayton Kershaw. Even when the Dodgers get into trouble with starting pitching, they have one of the best bullpens in all of baseball. Elite talents such as Tanner Scott, Blake Treinen, Kirby Yates, and Evan Phillips are all top relief arms in the MLB that can put in valuable innings all year.
The Dodgers are currently 9-2 and started 8-0 on the season before dropping a series to the Philadelphia Phillies. As it currently stands, the Dodgers are the only team in all of baseball to be in the top five in home runs hit (second), runs scored (fifth), Earned Run Average (ERA; second), and strikeouts (first).
The Dodgers are off to a great start, coming off their World Series title. Teams can change instantly in baseball, but it is hard to argue that this Dodgers team is not one of the best teams baseball has ever seen.