Los Angeles Dodgers' best-case, worst-case and most realistic scenarios for 2024
The Los Angeles Dodgers have the highest expectations entering 2024 of any of the 30 MLB teams. That's the curse of spending big-time.
Los Angeles Dodgers' Best-Case Scenario
The Dodgers’ best-case scenario is no secret: all-world domination. It involves winning the World Series, sweeping the MVP, Cy Young and Rookie of the Year, setting an all-time record for victories, and maybe getting Mookie Betts elected president.
This is, after all, a team that won 100 games last season, then added the most prized free agent (Shohei Ohtani) and the most prized Japanese import (Yoshinobu Yamamoto).
Since the Series victory is more or less assumed, let’s do the math on the wins record. It’s 116, shared by the 1906 Cubs and the 2011 Seattle Mariners. That’s 16 more than LA won last season. Are the offseason pickups – Ohtani, Yamamoto, trade acquisition Tyler Glasnow and injury returnees Gavin Lux and (eventually) Walker Buehler worth 16 games? Who’s to say no to this juggernaut?
The more intriguing question might be whether the Dodgers can set a new all-time record for winning percentage. For teams playing more than 150 games, that’s held by the 1906 Cubs, who went 116-36 with two ties, a .763 percentage.
To hit .764 over 162 games and assuming no ties, the Dodgers would have to win 124 games, losing only 38. Even for a super-team, that’s aspirational.
Dodgers' Worst-Case Scenario
Given the more than $1 billion spent by the Dodgers just this offseason to upgrade a 100-win team, anything less than a World Series win is by definition the worst-case scenario. The Dodgers could win 140 games this regular season, but if they trip up next October, the whole thing will have been a failure.
The problem is that when your goal is so manifestly ‘World Series win or bust,’ you are set up for a crash. And that’s even assuming, as sane people do, that the Dodgers will perform sensationally through September.
Since the wild card was created in 1995, 33 teams have either led or co-led the majors in victories over the course of a season of more than 100 games. Yet only six of those 30 teams – a mere 20 percent – went on to win their World Series. The Yankees did it in 1998 and 2009, the Red Sox in 2007, 2013 and 2018, and the Cubs in 2016. That’s it.
The Dodgers are as familiar with the perils of October as any team. In 2017, they won a major league-high 104 games, but lost the Series to the Houston Astros. In 2022, they won 111 games, but were knocked out by the Padres in the NLDS. Since 2017 alone, five Dodgers teams have won triple digits, then lost in postseason. Four of those five didn’t even get to the World Series.
The other ‘worst-case scenario’ haunting Dodger fans’ nightmares involves the pitching staff. There’s every reason Yamamoto will dominate here in at least a reasonable facsimile of how he has dominated Japanese baseball. But what if, for some reason, the cultural transition doesn’t take?
There are more what ifs. What if Glasnow gets hurt like he does most every year? What if Buehler doesn’t return to 2021 form from his arm injury? What if Bobby Miller has a sophomore slump? What if it’s June and the heart of the rotation is James Paxton and Ryan Yarbrough?
Dodgers' Most Realistic Scenario
Even in the unlikely event the pitching collapses, the Dodgers can still fall back on Betts, Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith and an offensive cast of thousands. It’s basically the same group that finished second in the majors in OPS last season, and that’s before adding Ohtani at DH.
As for the potential pitching concerns, that’s becoming routine in LA. Last year, Dodger manager Dave Roberts worked around the various issues limiting Buehler, Julio Urías, Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May, and still brought the staff home with a collective 4.06 ERA that beat the MLB average by more than a quarter of a point.
If the Dodgers don’t win the NL West, it would be the surprise of the season. The problem is the unpredictability of October. Dodger fans want to tell themselves that Andrew Friedman has ‘built for October,’ as if anybody knows what that means.
They would be advised to remember the sage advice of Oakland A’s boss Billy Beane, who said you build for the regular season because October is too unpredictable. Beane was and still is right. That $1 billion the Dodgers spent this year almost certainly bought them a pass into the postseason. Beyond that, they basically own a very expensive lottery ticket.
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