The Dodgers have won back-to-back World Championships. Yes, I was there at Game 7, serving as a calming force for others, a fact that I will harp on for the foreseeable future. Even hardened cynics are
proclaiming that this World Series is the best of all time. I’m not sure I can go that far, but it was certainly entertaining.
However, I did promise that I would point out how the Dodgers were ruining baseball, even if just a little bit.
I was prepared to let this issue sit for a little bit; after all, I needed a few days to recover and bask in the afterglow of victory. Then, the Canadians would not stop complaining, so we take a brief detour to address this issue first.
Bested with one arm
I understand how raw feelings can be after losing a World Series.
I never watched the end of Game 7 of the 2017 World Series until after the Dodgers won in 2020, and even then, it was an accident. I washed my hands of the 2018 World Series after Dave Roberts and Ryan Madson robbed me of my joy in Game 4, and Manny Machado had one of the worst at-bats I have ever seen to close out a game in Game 5.
I will tip my cap where credit is due.
The Blue Jays were likely a tougher matchup than the Seattle Mariners. The Blue Jays thoroughly out-hit and out-scored the Dodgers, who hit only .203 for the Series, the lowest mark for a winner since the 1966 Baltimore Orioles, who had a .200 mark. For the record, the 1966 Dodgers hit .142 in that World Series while getting swept in Sandy Koufax’s last ride.
Toronto led for 25 of 27 outs. In 2025, I had firsthand experience of seeing a lead improbably evaporate before the 27th out is recorded. It stinks. The Win Probability Chart for Game 7 resembles an EKG for a patient experiencing a cardiac episode.
With all that understanding in mind, when someone paid to talk about baseball says something incredibly dumb, even in the heat of the moment, we should take a moment to chuckle. This reflection is intended to remind us not to be that dumb if we ever find ourselves in that situation.
As the Dodgers were celebrating on the field, Sportsnet analyst Caleb Joseph gave his opinion about the recently completed World Series, forgetting how to count to four and opining that the better team had not prevailed in the World Series.
At the beginning of the World Series, I said that if the Dodgers hit like in the Wild Card round, the series would be delightfully short, and if the Dodgers hit like the Division Series round, the team better break out the Tums for everyone. The antacid flowed like the sands of Arrakis as the Dodger bats were generally in neutral for the championship.
It was a bit of a circuitous journey, but statistically, both in offense and pitching, the Blue Jays were numerically superior in this series. However, baseball is a cruel and funny sport: you can out-hit and out-pitch your opponent and still lose a series.
However, the Dodgers prevailed with one arm tied behind their back.
If you can’t solve Yoshinobu Yamamoto (and to a lesser extent Justin Wrobleski), you don’t get to call yourself champion.
If you can’t outslug an offense that has been slumping for the better part of a month, you don’t get to call yourself champion.
The Dodgers only had two regulars hit above .250 in the World Series: Shohei Ohtani (.333) and Will Smith (.267).
If you waste home-field advantage for the final two games of the year, you don’t get to call yourself champion.
Just like the Mariners let the Blue Jays off the hook by blowing a 2-0 ALCS lead, the Blue Jays let the Dodgers off the hook by blowing a 3-2 World Series lead with home-field advantage. Toronto had their numerous chances to finish off the Dodgers and could not do it. To quote Joe Davis: to beat the champ, you gotta knock him out.
Remember what the Mythbusters taught us: sliding leads to outs on bases you can overrun. Oops.
I would generally let whining like this go without comment. Still, I remember how chirpy Blue Jays fans were after beating the Mariners and during this series. And as I recall the chirping I received during Game 7, and the absolute silence outside the ballpark once I left to return to my hotel, I just smile.
The NHL-ification of MLB
How are the Dodgers ruining baseball? Certainly not by embracing the role of villain.
As an aside from the video, some of the Dodgers could definitely upgrade their walk-up music, but that topic is one for a later day. If you want to stop the Dodgers, beat them.
It’s not through their spending. My contempt is reserved for teams that seemed destined to be fodder. For example, the Anaheim Angels have spent over one billion dollars on player contracts from 2011 to 2021, and the team got considerably worse, despite having first-ballot Hall of Famers Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani (who arrived in 2018).
Expanded playoffs in MLB mean that teams that do not merit advancement do so only for the pleasure of serving as cannon fodder. The Cincinnati Reds had no business making the playoffs, serving as a speed bump and a reminder of what the Dodgers can do when they actually hit their stride. Expanding the playoffs even further would mean more teams like the Reds and more instances of chance being introduced into the postseason tournament, which would diminish the regular season as a whole.
Go too far, and you have to resort to gimmicks to try to undo what was supposed to be an improvement. Half the league makes the NHL playoffs, which is too many teams; hence, the made-up term “NHL-ification.” Currently, MLB admits just over a third of the league into the postseason, which is arguably too many teams. However, if we have more Octobers like the one we just had, it is a survivable trade-off.
As these past postseason essays have covered, a third of MLB franchises are more interested in looking like they are trying than actually trying to field a competitive roster. Fans should treat teams like the Baltimore Orioles or Minnesota Twins with contempt, as they had glimmers of promise that were snuffed out in the crib because their respective ownership groups were too cheap to build upon the success. Now the Orioles are adrift, and the Twins were sold off for pennies on the dollar at this year’s trade deadline.
How are the Dodgers ruining baseball? By making a devil’s bargain at the risk of forgetting what the sport is.
Baseball is the sound of spring and summer. One of baseball’s many strengths is the long, languid nature of its regular season. It does not demand your attention like American football or the Premier League.
Yes, before the pitch clock, the sport could be too languid, but for the most part, the regular season marathon plays out in the background and does not command the same level of attention as its postseason or other sports, such as the NFL.
The pitch clock and the regular-season Manfred Man in extra innings have been a godsend to the sport. Extra-inning marathons like Game 3 of the World Series? In October, sublime. In July, hell — some of us have things to do in the morning.
Can the pendulum switch back towards a less frantic pace? Sure. Personally, if the Manfred Man did not go live until the eleventh inning, the spirit of the rule could be honored while keeping most of its practical effect.
The key to understanding modern baseball is that it is, in fact, two sports in one: a lengthy marathon that sets up seeding for a shorter, more intense sprint to determine the overall winner. The same skills that lead to success in the marathon often do not translate over to the sprint; after all, as the Dodgers have learned over the past few years, there is no trophy for finishing with the best regular-season record in baseball.
Therefore, even though the Milwaukee Brewers had the best regular season in baseball in 2025, there is no prize apart from having home-field advantage throughout the playoffs for having the best record. Building your team to focus on small ball and stealing bases works well for a regular-season campaign that unfolds over time. What generally works in the postseason is having power arms in the rotation and the ability to slug home runs.
Alternative strategies can be effective, but they have a significantly narrower margin of error, especially if a team enters the postseason tournament with injuries. I am moderately amused that the finalists for National League manager of the year were the three managers dispatched by Dave Roberts and the Dodgers in the postseason tournament.
Pat Murphy can be folksy as he likes with his pocket pancakes, but I guarantee you that he would much rather be managing in the World Series than racking up personal achievements. Yet when I hear word that the Brewers are seeking to trade their best pitcher, it is increasingly difficult for me to take that organization seriously.
At some point, racking up extra wins in the regular season is wasted effort because there is nothing to be gained. (See: 2022 Dodgers.) At some point, if the team shows up banged up to the postseason, it may not matter. (See: 2023 Dodgers.) Sometimes you have to take unorthodox personnel, mash them together, and rely on the team to stumble (See: 2024 Dodgers, also 2025 NLDS Dodgers).
Admittedly, I was of two minds when forecasting the playoffs, as I was spectacularly annoyed with the Dodgers’ summer, which will happen. In my heart, there was a “just” option for what was about to happen, and in my head, there was an option that we all deserved because no one deserved anything nice. At the start of the playoffs, the “just” option was a dudefest Phillies/Mariners World Series. The worst option was a Dodgers/Yankees rematch, as both teams had scuffled throughout the year, and the needless drama from the Bronx was already making me gag.
Frankly, 40 years between matchups was not quite enough.
Around the time that I came back from Pittsburgh and Baltimore, Craig Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus wrote an interesting paywalled essay that argued that the Dodgers were, in fact, ruining baseball, and summarized my feelings about what the Dodgers were going quite well:
The difference between [now and previous seasons] is that the Dodgers had enough cushion within the division that whatever in-season experiments they wanted to run were basically irrelevant. That’s the kind of thing you can do without causing agita when you win 111 games and finish the season 22 up on your next closest competitor. …
But it’s the similarities that create the bigger problem. In both situations, Roberts and the Dodgers seem to just…not care all that much. Obviously, their preference is to win, you don’t spend what they’ve spent just to win in the playoffs, but to be good enough to sell lots of tickets and ads throughout the season, too. …
There’s nothing strictly wrong with prioritizing a World Series; it’s where the league and its culture have arrived, hand in hand. But the impact of taking the longest view available at every possible turn undeniably results in a diluted on-field product—again, much as we’ve seen with the league as a whole. …
And that kind of thinking can make a certain kind of sense. The league has devalued winning the division, especially if you’re not a top-two seed. The Dodgers likely look at the benefits of being the third-seed division winner compared to the fourth-seed top Wild Card and…shrug. It’s home-field advantage in the Wild Card round either way, so why press things?
And yet, the Dodgers stumbled through the summer like someone who was either drunk or very hungover at the circus.
Some of the Dodgers attributed the poor regular-season play to fatigue, but, truthfully, they were defeated by their own past success throughout the year. It is hard to gin oneself up for six games with the Anaheim Angels, but even the most passive observer could tell that the Dodgers were not nearly as sharp as they once had been.
Throughout the year, the 2025 Dodgers said their first mission was to win the division with the team as healthy as possible. A team that respected the regular season would not have tolerated the inept bullpen play of Blake Treinen, Tanner Scott, and Kirby Yates, much less kept sending them out to lose ballgames in spectacularly awful fashion. A team that respected the regular season would not have kept Michael Conforto around the entire year, while discarding Chris Taylor. A team that respected the regular season would have actually improved its roster at the trade deadline, no disrespect to Alex Call, Paul Gervase, and Brock Stewart.
Yes, the Dodgers ultimately won their division and ultimately another championship. Still, they resembled an early 2000s Los Angeles Lakers team that would bumble through the regular season, turn it on for the postseason, and win. One should not be an underachieving A-student. Channelling Matt Damon’s character from Good Will Hunting is not a good look.
It is worth repeating that if the Dodgers had even an adequate bullpen, they likely would have had the number-one seed for the playoffs.
It is worth repeating that if the Dodgers’ regulars, apart from Ohtani and Smith, had even average World Series performers, the team likely would have celebrated at home for the second time in franchise history.
Dwelling on the what-ifs is of no help (just ask Toronto for the foreseeable future), but learning the proper lessons from what worked will be beneficial. Asking Yoshinobu Yamamoto to have back-to-back generational performances seems a bit unfair and unlikely.
As an aside, I speak from plenty of personal experience on this point. The notions of success and hard work did not go together in my mind for far longer than they should have.
While the Dodgers’ inept play annoyed me during the year, I will admit that this run was a pleasant surprise. I wrote off the Dodgers doing anything of consequence, ironically enough, on August 10th — the date on which the Dodgers failed to secure a sweep of the Toronto Blue Jays. This game, ironically, was the margin of difference in who wound up with home-field advantage in this final round.
Currently, this problem is more academic than anything else.
It seems unlikely that other teams will adopt the Dodgers’ strategy as more than a third of the league refuses to spend on their rosters. However, if the Dodgers insist on running the same strategy in 2026, would it be too much to ask for them to be a bit more adaptable and willing to admit that certain things are not working? Yes, the Dodgers are champions once again; my only gripe is that the year felt like more of a slog than it had any right to be. Still, this circus was entertaining in the end.
