The Dodgers aren’t just playing season by season these days. They’re aiming at history. They’ve won the last two World Championships, and after acquiring closer Edwin Díaz and outfielder Kyle Tucker, they’re well positioned to win a third.
Los Angeles currently stands at +225 to have the October dogpile; the Yankees (+1100) and Mariners (+1200) are the distant second and third choices at the moment. There are actually 11 teams crammed between +1100 and +2500; you can make a lot of pitches for championship clubs after the Dodgers. But any reasonable person would admit the Dodgers are the obvious favorites.
When Tucker was added to a name-brand lineup that already has three past MVP winners (Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman), there was an instant discussion as to whether or not the Dodgers have the best offense in fantasy baseball history, or the best team in fantasy baseball history. The offensive floor is very high for this team. The Dodgers have ranked top five in runs scored for eight straight seasons (2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 1st, 4th, 1st, 5th, 5th). They just added Tucker, the top offensive player from the free agent market. Ohtani remains a unicorn.
I get the excitement for “greatest ever” types of discussion, but I’m generally going to throw cold water on these types of things. A lot can go wrong en route to history.
Let’s try to unpack some of this. How could this Hollywood team go off script?
It’s an older team
The Tucker addition made a lot of sense for a team that just didn’t need an outfielder; it needed a younger outfielder. Look at the seasonal ages in this lineup:
Betts had a 104 OPS+ last year; 100 is league average. Hernández was at 103. Freeman’s production the last two years was under his career norm; he was merely the No. 46 hitter in 5×5 value despite playing 147 games. Muncy will likely fall into a platoon; he’ll be on the heavy side of it, but it will cost him some at-bats.
It’s commonly accepted that an offensive player’s peak is somewhere in the 26-29 range. It doesn’t mean players in their 30s can’t still be stars, and at this point, it would be foolish to ever doubt Ohtani on anything. But sometimes we have to let actuary vibes sneak into our fantasy discussions.
It’s not an aggressive running team
Given the power up and down the Los Angeles lineup, you can understand why manager Dave Roberts doesn’t look to manufacture runs. Only two regular L.A. players had double-digit steals last year — Ohtani swiped 20 bags (the 59 the previous year always felt like a do-it-once thing) and Pages stole 14 bases. Betts (eight steals) and Freeman (six steals) have mostly shut down this part of their games. Edman was once an aggressive runner in St. Louis; he attempted just four steals last year. Gridlock is alive and well in Southern California.
The Dodgers manage like they’re in the playoffs already
The Dodgers seemed to learn a lesson in the 2021-2023 pocket, when they banked a ridiculous 317 regular-season wins but never made it to the World Series. They’ve settled for 98 and 93 wins the last two years and finished each with a championship. It’s not that they’re not trying during the regular season, but they accept it merely as a precursor to the games that matter in October. They’re basically already in the playoffs — they’ve qualified 13 straight years and now 40% of MLB clubs make the tournament — and with that, you can tread carefully during the six-month seasonal slog.
This strategy will affect how much fantasy value their starting pitchers accrue. Whenever any L.A. hurler has a small burp to his shoulder, elbow or forearm, he’s probably getting some rest. The Dodgers have the personnel to run a six-man rotation anyway.
Last year, Yoshinobu Yamamoto made it to 173.2 innings; no one else on staff got to 113 innings. In 2024, only two LAD pitchers got past 90 innings, and no one qualified for the ERA title. The team cap was a modest 131.2 innings back in 2023.
Yamamoto was the World Series hero last year and maybe he’s capable of breaking this strategy. But given the ages and injury histories of Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and even Ohtani, I’d be very careful of how I project them on the mound. Emmet Sheehan and Roki Sasaki (expected to start again) also have tempered ceilings.
So I’ve tried to pump the breaks a little bit on the runaway expectations. But what if the 2026 Dodgers hit the high end of their range? What historical teams are they chasing?
The greatest fantasy baseball teams of MLB history
The best OPS+ team of all time was the 1927 Yankees (127), the canonical answer for best offense ever. They’re followed by some teams you actually might have seen; the 2023 Braves, the 2017 Astros (aided by the trash cans), the 1976 Reds and the 2024 Dodgers. Other teams in the top 10 include the 2019 Astros, 2019 Yankees and 2019 Twins. The 116-win Mariners club from 2001 ranks 11th.
Nobody is likely to score 1,000 runs in today’s MLB; that mark has only been done three times. The 1932 and 1936 Yankees did, along with the 1999 Indians (my pick as the best offense in the fantasy era). We’ve seen 17 teams from the past 25 years make it past 900 runs; that’s a good target for the Dodgers. Los Angeles scored 906 runs back in 2023.
The homer record stands at 307; the 2023 Braves and 2019 Twins hold that post. The best L.A. homer season came in 2019, when they hit 279. The ball was lively that year, you probably recall. The Dodgers thumped 249 homers in 2023 and 244 last year; they will likely be around that number for the new season.
Maybe you’d prefer a modern metric view of all this. If we look at all the fantasy-era offenses by their collective offensive WAR (using Baseball Reference), the 2007 Yankees percolate to the top (40.0). They’re followed by the 2001 Mariners, 2023 Braves, 2017 Astros and 2024 Dodgers. Last year’s Dodger club had 29.1 oWAR as a team, the 62nd-best offense in this query.
Great offense, sure. But a long ride from the top of the list.
Hey, the future is unwritten. Maybe Tucker will finally get some injury luck to go his way and will post a career season. You never say never with anything related to Ohtani. Betts and Freeman are already Hall of Famers by résumé; maybe they have another golden season left. Smith could easily beat all the other fantasy catchers. Hernández is a run-producing star. The pitchers might not make 25 starts, but there are stars up and down the rotation. Díaz is a lights-out closer, too.
Should be a blast of a season. It’s a shame Vin Scully isn’t still around to add his words and poetry.
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