2025 World Series: Max Muncy — A season of changes
Muncy’s resilient 2025 is an important season of his Dodger career
By Cary Osborne
Episode 1: Hope
City limits signs throughout Arizona could temporarily be changed each February. Spring Training cities like Mesa, Surprise, and yes, Glendale, could be renamed “Hope.”
The beginning of a new baseball season brings that. For many baseball players, for better or worse, they will say this is the point where they start at zero.
While that was also true for Max Muncy, February 2025 marked a point where he started at 190.
At the top of Muncy’s Dodger resume are the words “power hitter.” The 190 home runs made him one of the greatest in franchise history.
Already the Los Angeles Dodgers’ left-handed hitting home run leader, Muncy came into this season within reach of becoming the eighth player in franchise history to reach 200 home runs.
Muncy began season eight as a Dodger with two All-Star selections, two World Series championships and a share of the franchise’s career postseason home run record with 13.
He had already carved out a prominent place in Dodger history among power hitters. But he wanted more.
“This is a pretty storied organization,” Muncy said in February. “A lot of great players have played in this organization. So just to be anywhere in there is pretty cool. The individual things are always great. The most important thing to me is two rings. I want another ring. I want more rings. Just to have two, I think it’s pretty special when you think about this organization and how hard it is to win a World Series.”
Last season, with all its life-altering October moments, was another challenging one. A right oblique injury lingered, turning into three months on the injured list in 2024.
In 2022, Muncy struggled through the first four months of the season before taking a literal step back to move forward, creating a timing mechanism in his hitting mechanics that benefited him down the stretch. He missed the entire 2021 postseason after a collision in the final regular season game tore his left ulnar collateral ligament.
Nothing has been easy.
Muncy’s Dodger career even began under difficult circumstances. He signed with the Dodgers after a release from the Athletics in 2017.
So 2025 began with gratitude.
“If it weren’t for this organization, the people in it, I wouldn’t be in baseball,” Muncy said, standing in front of his locker at Camelback Ranch in Glendale, Arizona. “They kind of brought me back from the dead all those years ago when they decided to give me another chance. And it’s one of those things where just being able to be here, as long as I’ve been, has been truly a blessing and something that I definitely don’t take for granted. I know how special it is to be here, and I try to relay that message to everybody that I see. This place is truly unique and truly special, and it’s an amazing place to be.”
Episode 2: Adversity
By the second week of May, things weren’t clicking. Memories of 2022 came back. Through 28 games, the power hitter had no home runs. Through 39, he had one.
Despite the majority support he received from the Dodger fanbase, the critics that formed a small minority were audible. And it was difficult on Muncy and his family.
“Fans are allowed to have their opinions — right, wrong, indifferent, doesn’t matter; good, bad, whatever. They’re allowed to have their opinions,” Muncy said in May. “And that’s what makes fans great, is they’re going to show up and support their team. And when you’re not doing well, they kind of let you know. And for me, I signed up for this life. I understood what I was getting myself into. When you do good, they’re going to love you. When you do bad, they’re not necessarily going to love you. But for my family, they didn’t entirely sign up for this. … That was a really tough one for me to deal with.”
Muncy put in work. He tried mechanical fixes. Heck, he tried the torpedo bat briefly.
The 35-year-old learned that he had astigmatism in his right eye. He began wearing glasses in games on April 30.
“Throughout the course of the history of the game, there are very few players that are good enough to be stubborn, to say no to things,” Muncy said. “On one hand, if you’re not willing to change in this game and try to do things to make yourself better, you’re going to fizzle out really fast. For me, I’ve known that for a long time. That could be just going back to how my career started. That’s just something I’ve always understood — that you’ve got to be willing to make changes. The league’s going to adjust, and you’ve got to adjust with it.”
From May 14, when he hit his second home run of the season, till July 2, Muncy drove in more runs (46) than any Major Leaguer. His 1.053 OPS ranked fifth in the Majors during the span. And his 12 home runs were second on the Dodgers behind Shohei Ohtani.
That July 2, with Clayton Kershaw one strikeout away from 3,000, Chicago White Sox outfielder Michael A. Taylor slid into Muncy’s left knee. He had to be helped off the field.
Among Muncy’s first thoughts was that his season was over.
Episode 3: Adversity II
It wasn’t. It was the best-case scenario — a bone bruise. On Aug. 4, he was back.
“Obviously, a million things start going through your mind (when you’re hurt),” Muncy said in August. “And obviously they’re all the worst. It’s hard to stay positive in a moment like that. But I’m just extremely thankful to be able to be back on the baseball field this year. I’m going to try to enjoy every second of it just knowing how close it was to not being there.”
Muncy said it might take a little time to get resettled.
He was right. It took a day.
After a hitless return on Aug. 4 against St. Louis at Dodger Stadium, he hit two home runs. His presence in the lineup lifted a sagging offense.
In eight games back, he homered four times, drove in nine runs and had a 1.401 OPS.
He was now up to 207 career home runs as a Dodger. He had passed Carl Furillo and Matt Kemp and now occupied seventh in franchise history and fourth in Los Angeles Dodgers history in home runs.
But a swing in the batting cage on Aug. 13 stopped him. It was the right oblique again.
Hold your breath.
Episode 4: Resilience
Max Muncy spoke a few words, coughed, spoke a few words and coughed.
True to form, Muncy still battled a little adversity in his return to the Dodgers on Sept. 8, as he was trying to fight off the tail end of a chest cold.
“We’re here still, still coughing, but probably coughing for another month. But that’s how my body handles these things,” he said that day.
He missed nearly a month — 23 games total. The team went 11–12 in the span.
The offense missed a beat without him.
But Muncy returned — again — this time with the intent to fulfill those hopes from Arizona in February.
“I’m just happy to be back,” Muncy said. “I live to be out there.”
Episode 5: Gratitude
“I want another ring.” It was seven months ago that Max Muncy made the statement.
This episodic season had taken Muncy to a place where he could help make that happen — the postseason.
Muncy’s throw to Mookie Betts in a critical defensive play — the now-famous wheel play in the ninth inning of Game 2 of the National League Division Series — helped secure a win.
He nearly hit a game-changer in Game 1 of the NLCS, but a potential extra-base hit with the bases loaded became a wild 404-foot double play.
The next day, Muncy hit a solo home run in the sixth inning. The Dodgers won NLCS Game 2 by a score of 3–1.
Muncy was now the Dodgers’ career postseason home run king with 14.
And if his words sound familiar, they are.
This has been a season of gratitude for Max Muncy.
“The Dodgers are a franchise that have been around for a very, very long time. A lot of very successful players have played in this organization. And to be able to break that record is kind of huge for me,” he said on Oct. 14 in Milwaukee. “But the biggest thing I would say is it speaks to the fact that I’ve had a chance to play in so many postseason games. And that’s the biggest thing about being a Dodger, you know you’ll have a chance in October to play meaningful baseball games.
“To be able to have that chance every single year I’ve been here, that’s always been the most important thing to me. You get as many chances as you can to win that World Series. That’s the reason why you play this game.”
He has that chance again.
2025 World Series: Max Muncy — A season of changes was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.