Inside the Dodgers’ Struggle: What’s Blocking Their Rise to Dominance?

It should be noted that the league-wide OPS is .719 so far this year compared to the full season .711 OPS last year. So the league’s hitters have performed better, and the Dodgers have been a bit worse.
It’s fair to worry about Betts, especially if his struggles extend into the postseason. But for the most part, the lineup has been fine without his usual elite production. The Dodgers’ offensive TRACR is still third-best in baseball, behind only the Boston Red Sox and Milwaukee Brewers.

The bullpen’s 4.21 ERA is 21st in baseball, and a lot of that is on the signings and re-signings of this year. Tanner Scott was given a lot of money to be an elite reliever but has an ERA over 4.00. Kirby Yates and Blake Treinen both have ERAs over 4.00 as well.

Back in 2021, the Dodgers won 106 games and didn’t even win the division. That year, 13 teams finished more than five games under .500. This year, there are only eight teams that meet that criterion. There aren’t as many easy games on the schedule, which means it’s harder than ever to bank a lot of wins.

Is it because of their own shortcomings or is this just the way of the league now?

Yet here we are in the middle of August, and the Dodgers are … good. Not legendary or historically good or an unstoppable juggernaut, but a very good baseball team that has fallen into a tie with the San Diego Padres for first in the NL West and is tied for the sixth-best record in baseball heading into play on Aug. 13.

There are plenty of Dodgers-related reasons for why the team hasn’t run laps around the league, but the biggest of all might have nothing to do with them. Namely, the league has made it much more difficult to accumulate a bunch of wins with the addition of the extra wild-card spot.

Did anyone actually think the Dodgers would simply steamroll through 2025 like last year? Sure, the preseason hype had everyone buzzing—calls of the most talented team of the decade, heck, maybe even the century. They bolstered their roster smartly, signing big names like Blake Snell and re-signing key players. The sportsbooks even set their win total at a jaw-dropping 105.5. Yet, here we are in August, and while the Dodgers are solid contenders, they’re a far cry from the juggernaut so many expected. So what gives? Is it a cracked roster, relentless bad luck, or perhaps the shifting landscape of a league less willing to roll over? Let’s take a closer look at why this powerhouse has stumbled short of those sky-high expectations. LEARN MORE

The Dodgers’ over/under for wins ballooned to 105.5 at most sportsbooks, an astronomical number. And though the playoffs are always difficult to predict, new-look Los Angeles appeared ready to roll through the regular season.

But as teams have seen how attainable the last wild-card spot is, more of them have decided to go for it. The Dodgers led the league with 98 wins last year and only the white-hot Brewers have a good shot of hitting that mark this year.

The Mookie Mystery

The post Failure to Launch: Why Aren’t the Dodgers a Juggernaut? appeared first on Opta Analyst.

With these three pitchers healthy, the backup plan for an oft-injured rotation had plenty of good options. Without them, it was down to Dustin May, Landon Knack, Tony Gonsolin, Ben Casparius and Bobby Miller. That’s still a lot of names, but not much production as none has an ERA under 4.50. The rotation has a 4.10 ERA that ranks 18th in the majors and a lot of it comes down to the Plan B not being good enough.

The Dodgers lost River Ryan, Gavin Stone and Emmet Sheehan to injuries last year, with Ryan and Stone being injured enough to miss all of 2025 as well. Sheehan has returned and looked decent (3.86 ERA in 35.0 innings), which is a good sign.  

The Dodgers have shown a bigger appetite than most in acquiring and drafting pitchers with injury risks and normally have enough depth to cover for it. That’s why the problems for the 2025 rotation really started in 2024.

Basically, Betts no longer hits the ball hard or possesses elite speed. His margin for error is much lower than it used to be. And if he can’t lift the ball at the perfect angle anymore, it’s going to be difficult to slug how he has in the past – even with his elite decision-making skills at the plate still intact.

Will Smith has looked like one of the best hitters in baseball, Andy Pages has taken the next step developmentally and Max Muncy has stayed on the field more frequently (he’s missed significant time this year but has already played 15 more games than he did last season).

The Dodgers have had 16 different pitchers make a start for them this season, with only Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitching enough innings to qualify for the ERA title.

The preseason discussions about the team didn’t focus on whether it was the best team of 2025. The debate was around whether it was the most talented team of the decade or century.

With an extra playoff team in each league, more teams are trying to be at least decent in hopes of making the playoffs. There are currently nine teams within five games of .500, which would tie 2005 for the most in any season in MLB history with at least 100 games.

Broken down by positions, there are three spots where the Dodgers have hit better in 2025 compared to 2024 and it’s simply been internal improvements at catcher, center field and third base.

Only time will tell.

But the biggest offensive issue is that the lineup has a Mookie Betts-sized hole in it.

Pitchers get hurt all the time, but some pitchers are more susceptible to injuries than others. The two exciting new additions to the rotation were Snell (who has thrown more than 130 innings twice in his first nine seasons) and Sasaki (who was seen as an exciting project who would need to be brought along). They’ve combined to make 12 starts so far this year.

Déjà Vu

The Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series last year despite running out of starting pitchers in the playoffs due to injuries. They then fortified their team by re-signing Teoscar Hernandez, Enrique Hernandez and Blake Treinen and adding Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki, Tanner Scott, Kirby Yates, Hyeseong Kim and Michael Conforto.

Last season, Betts had a launch-angle sweet-spot percentage (which measures how often you hit a ball at the ideal launch angle) in the 92nd percentile of all hitters. He only hit the ball on the ground 27.0% of the time. In 2025, his launch-angle sweet-spot percentage is down to the 54th percentile and he’s hitting it on the ground 34.5% of the time.

It wasn’t impossible to see this coming, either.

Some of those are minor differences (Ohtani is still an MVP candidate, Freddie Freeman is still a middle-of-the-order caliber bat) and some are much more dramatic (Michael Conforto has not been the answer in left field.)

The Dodgers haven’t lived up to the preseason hype. Is it because of flaws in the roster, bad luck or something else entirely?

Instead, the team’s imposing rotation has been mostly theoretical again this year.

From 2017 to 2021, there were at least three teams that won 100 games in every full season. The new wild card was added in 2022, and the first couple of years felt like more of the same, as there were a combined seven teams that won 100 games in 2022 and 2023.

The Dodgers envisioned this trio as one of the best back-end units in the game. Instead, they’ve all been below-average.

Betts has received MVP votes in four of his first five seasons with the Dodgers and his lowest OPS with the team coming into this season was .854. That number is down to .682 this year, which is well below league average.

All this has also made it more difficult for teams to acquire what they need at the deadline. The Dodgers made a smart move grabbing Brock Stewart, but he’s already caught the injury bug and is on the IL. It was difficult for them to make a lot of other moves as the list of sellers was perilously thin.

On the surface, Los Angeles’ offense is performing very similarly to last season.

Tyler Glasnow has a long history of injuries and Clayton Kershaw is 37 years old

If you take the difference between MLB teams’ projected preseason win totals by oddsmakers and their projected win totals based on current winning percentage, the Dodgers have been the fourth-most disappointing team in baseball behind the Atlanta Braves, Colorado Rockies and Baltimore Orioles.

Push to the Middle

So what has caused the Dodgers to be a solid contender and not a runaway favorite? There are several factors, including some offensive fall-offs, more pitching injuries and a league that’s determined to push teams to the middle more than ever.

Betts’ average exit velocity and hard-hit percentage declined last year, per Baseball Savant, and those numbers dropped even more this season. He was able to maintain offensive production by hitting the ball at the perfect launch angle often and, consequently, keeping the ball off the ground.

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The bigger issue has been the pitching. The Dodgers are just 16th in defensive TRACR, which measures run prevention, so pitching and defense. After so many injuries last year, it seemed like the Dodgers injury-proofed their pitching staff this offseason with their bevy of signings.

LA probably thought last season was the worst-case scenario in terms of pitching injuries and bad luck. The team is learning that just because things are bad doesn’t mean they’ll get better.

Nobody is going to feel sorry for the Dodgers not being a powerhouse, and the ultimate goal of being the first repeat champion since the New York Yankees in 2000 is still very much on the table. But exploring the reasons why they aren’t easily the class of the league is still important.

It may seem silly to call a team disappointing when it might enter the playoffs as the favorite to win the championship, but disappointment is a relative term.

Baseball is never easy.

Unless Betts morphs back into a star, the Dodgers are going to have a hard time replacing his elite production.

But the Dodgers have been worse by OPS+ at the other six positions (including DH).
After an illness cost him a chance to play in the opening games in Japan, Betts started the season hot but hasn’t had sustained success for any large period of time in 2025. Excluding his three games in March, his highest OPS for a month was .738 in May.