Baseball is back! Are the Dodgers the greatest team ever assembled?
The offseason is over, and baseball is officially back. Spring training kicked off in Arizona on February 20. Opening day isn’t until March 27, but a lot can be learned during the preseason
The offseason is over, and baseball is officially back. Spring training kicked off in Arizona on February 20. Opening day isn’t until March 27, but a lot can be learned during the preseason. We’ll see which of the top prospects look ready to enter the big leagues, which pitchers have added new pitches to their arsenal, and we’ll get to see how players like Juan Soto look on their new teams. The season looks primed to be thrilling, with lots of storylines to follow. The question is, are the Los Angeles Dodgers the greatest team ever assembled?
The Dodgers are coming off a dominant postseason where they went 11-5 and capped it off with a World Series win. Then, in this offseason, they managed to retain their best players and got objectively better. Let’s first look at the major pieces that led them to their title last season. Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Shohei Ohtani headlined their killer offense and are all back for this season. Looking at the 2023 MVP results shows how deadly this lineup is. The Dodgers had the second and third-place finishers in the National League and then signed Ohtani, who finished first in the American League MVP. Their pitching, headlined by future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw and rookie Yoshinobu Yamamoto, was the weak part of their team, but after this offseason, it might be their biggest strength.
The Dodgers’ most significant off-season acquisitions were Blake Snell, Kirby Yates, and Roki Sasaki. Blake Snell won the National League Cy Young award, the most prestigious award for pitchers, in 2023 and is still in his prime at 32 years old. Kirby Yates was unquestionably the best closer in baseball last year, and Roki Sasaki is the latest Japanese superstar to jump over to the MLB. They will also have Shohei Ohtani pitching for them this year after not pitching last season due to surgery. Ohtani is another incredible pitcher, finishing fourth in the 2023 American League Cy Young voting.
This huge talent acquisition doesn’t come without controversy. The Dodgers have effectively cornered the market on Japanese players. The Dodgers were able to sign Ohtani and Yamamoto last year and Sasaki this year. These are players that every team wants, but players that are choosing to go to the Dodgers. Japan is a hot spot for baseball right now, with many players doing incredibly well in the MLB. It would be like if the Lakers got to sign every player who played at Duke; the amount of talent produced there gives you a huge lead against every other team.
Is it something that MLB needs to fix? Perhaps. It’s probably a little early to do anything drastic, but regardless, this advantage has allowed the Dodgers to construct one of the best teams that we’ve ever seen. Is it the greatest of all time? I don’t know. Currently, this group of players has only one title, and to truly be considered the greatest team ever, you’d have to lead a dynasty.
The Dodgers could very well be at the start of a dynasty, but we’ll have to wait and see. Baseball can be unpredictable, and with so many teams putting together talented rosters, it can be easy to slip up. Who might the team be that could beat the Dodgers? Spring training will help us know as we start seeing the developments of another grand season.
