The world champions head into 2025 built to make a run at another title
Editor’s note: This story appears in the first Dodger Insider magazine of 2025 — available at parking gates at Dodger Stadium during the first homestead (while supplies last).
by Cary Osborne
The door hinges at the entrance of the Dodgers’ Camelback Ranch facility were getting a much earlier workout than usual.
Pitchers, catchers and position players weren’t required to be at the Dodgers’ Spring Training complex for days and in some cases nearly two weeks. But in the first days of February, Dodger players made their way through the front double doors with regularity.
Complacency was clearly not part of the Dodger vocabulary after the team won the World Series in 2024.
That was abundantly clear with the work put in the days after the Dodgers hosted a championship rally at Dodger Stadium on Nov. 1.
“Two days.”
That’s the amount of time Dodgers President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman said he allowed himself to celebrate the eighth World Series title in franchise history.
“We had fun and didn’t really think about all that we had to catch up on and how far behind we were until we were flying to San Antonio for the GM meetings,” Friedman said. “That’s when we kind of flipped the switch. It was, ‘OK, we put this off long enough. We’ve got to really start planning for the offseason.’”
So by the time Spring Training was really underway, that flip-the-switch mantra was in the upright position.
Mookie Betts, now a three-time World Series champion, was one of the most vocal in Spring Training, saying that he wanted to move forward. Though he admitted it’s hard not to live in that special moment.
“But we didn’t win last year because we were talking about the World Series every day,” Betts said. “We won last year because we talked about the task at hand. And I think we have to continue to think about the task at hand and not worry about the end goal. We have an end goal, of course, but you have to take stepping stones to get there.”
The Dodgers placed the first stepping stones for the 2025 team on the last weekend of November — a month removed from beating the Yankees 7–6 in Game 5 of the World Series.
Outfielder/infielder Tommy Edman, who was acquired before the 2024 Major League Baseball trade deadline and became a key cog in the Dodger postseason machine, signed a five-year contract extension.
The Dodgers announced they had signed two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell the next day.
As fall turned to winter, the snowball grew.
The Dodgers announced the re-signing of relief ace Blake Treinen and former All-Star outfielder Michael Conforto on Dec. 10. Teoscar Hernández re-signed and Korea Baseball Organization star infielder Hyeseong Kim signed on Jan. 3.
The Dodgers added the top international free agent, Roki Sasaki — a right-hander with two world-class pitches (his splitter and four-seam fastball) — on Jan. 22. All-Star reliever Tanner Scott joined the Dodgers on Jan. 23. Veteran Kirby Yates, who had the №2 reliever ERA in 2024, signed on Jan. 30.
The Dodgers re-signed utilityman and October hero Kiké Hernández on Feb. 11 and living legend left-hander Clayton Kershaw on Feb. 13.
Edman, Treinen, Kershaw and the Hernándezes, in that group of offseason transactions, receive World Series championship rings on March 28. That leaves another group of players eager to help lift the 2025 team to another championship.
“I’ve been there, but I failed,” said Snell, whose Tampa Bay Rays lost to the Dodgers in the 2020 World Series. “They’ve been there and they succeeded. So being able to see what that’s like, hearing from them, and then also hopefully help them with the hunger of ‘I want to do this every year, win World Series after World Series,’ — that’s why we all play. That’s what makes the offseason worth it, is to get to the playoffs. That’s what makes the whole season worth it. So for me, pushing it forward, it’s just do what I can do to help the team win the World Series, to get into position to just get to the playoffs. That’s hard by itself, too. So, yeah, I’ll be looking forward to it.”
It’s easy to say that the Dodgers have made getting to the playoffs look, well, easy. They have reached the postseason 12 straight seasons, winning 11 NL West crowns, four NL pennants and two World Series titles since 2013.
But each season has been its own game of Mario Kart, revealing unexpected obstacles on the way to game 162. The 2024 season was a perfect example.
The Dodgers used a franchise-record 40 different pitchers last season. They lost their three best pitchers — by measure of wins above replacement — for significant chunks of time to the injured list. Two of those pitchers — Tyler Glasnow and Gavin Stone — were out for the postseason with injuries. The third, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, returned to start four postseason games — all victories.
Betts and two-time All-Star Max Muncy missed months of the season, while Freddie Freeman broke a finger and cartilage in his rib and badly sprained an ankle — in addition to missing time to care for his son Maximus, who was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome.
This 2025 team, though, appears even better suited to handle the rigors of a 162-game season and beyond.
One place where that is abundantly clear is the bullpen.
Twelve Major League relief pitchers had a sub-2.00 ERA in 2024. Four of them now pitch for the Dodgers — newly acquired Yates (1.17 with Texas) and Scott (1.75 with Miami and San Diego) as well as Dodger veterans Alex Vesia (1.76) and Treinen (1.93).
Then there’s hard-throwing Michael Kopech, who had a 1.13 ERA in 24 appearances after the Dodgers acquired him from the Chicago White Sox at the 2024 trade deadline.
That group also doesn’t even include the Dodgers’ saves leader over the past two seasons Evan Phillips (42 saves) or Brusdar Graterol, who had a 1.20 ERA in 2023 and is hoping for a second-half return after offseason right shoulder surgery.
“Last year, when I was in San Diego, I thought we had a good bullpen,” Scott said. “Then I got here, and we have a really, really, really good bullpen.”
The same could be said about the starting rotation.
The Dodgers will have a Triple-A starting rotation that could be a big league rotation. That’s how much depth they have at the Major League level to begin the season with the additions of Snell and Sasaki and the returns of Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin to a group that includes Glasnow and Yamamoto. Down the road comes Kershaw for his 18th season and Shohei Ohtani after a year away from the mound recovering from elbow surgery.
Snell led all Major League pitchers with a 1.45 second-half ERA and had the lowest opponents’ batting average (.133), slugging percentage (.189) and OPS (.412). He ranked second in strikeouts per nine innings (13.6).
Ohtani, in 86 career Major League starts, has a career 3.01 ERA and an 11.4 strikeouts-per-nine innings rate.
Then there’s Ohtani the hitter and baserunner.
Ohtani is coming off a season for the ages — the first 50/50 player in Major League history with a franchise record 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases. He led the National League or ranked second in home runs, RBI (130), stolen bases, batting average (.310), on-base percentage (.390), slugging (.646), OPS (1.036) and total bases (411).
He will once again be a two-way player.
Ohtani appeared in 159 games last season as a designated hitter. He was able to appear in 155 and 157 in 2021 and 2022 with the balancing act of being a member of the Angels starting rotation.
The Dodgers will read and react with Ohtani, who is coming off 2023 right elbow and 2024 left shoulder surgery.
“What we need out of Shohei (this year) is №1 to stay healthy,” said manager Dave Roberts. “Health is obviously №1, as it is for all players. (If he stays healthy), the numbers will be there.”
That’s the thought with much of the lineup. A healthy Freeman hits .300. Betts, now a shortstop, pushes a .900 OPS. Catcher Will Smith is good for 20 home runs and third baseman Max Muncy gets his 25 or so homers.
Teoscar Hernández was one of baseball’s most productive outfielders in 2024 with 33 home runs, 99 RBI and an .840 OPS. Switch-hitter and National League Championship Series MVP Edman does things big and small. The Dodgers are banking on free-agent acquisition Conforto, who hit 20 home runs with San Francisco in 2024, still having a lot of pop in the bat.
The Dodger offense is a matchup problem. Layer on that they could alternate left-right one through nine in the lineup with nine impact hitters.
There is a lot of reason for optimism in LA after a world championship season. But for some, it’s best to collect the 2024 ring and move it to the back of the closet. The journey starts over.
For others, 2024 is part of the 2025 journey. Call it, hopefully, a continuation.
“That’s the beauty of people’s personalities and how people go about it,” said Freeman, the 2024 World Series MVP whose Game 1 walk-off grand slam is one of the lasting memories of last season. “Some people need to shut it off to get ready. And some people can be OK with thinking about it. I’m OK thinking about it because there’s a lot that went into last year, and I appreciate all that went into last year. And I have a little extra from making it through last year as a family, as an organization — we did so many wonderful things.”
From Dodger Insider magazine: The best never rest was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.