The winterlong celebration is over. Opening Day is finally here.
This will be a season opener unlike any before it for the Dodgers.
Never before have they started a season as the two-time defending World Series champions. Never before have they started a season on the precipice of the kind of history they could make this year.
Only four teams in baseball history have won three or more consecutive titles, and three of them were Yankees: Joe DiMaggio’s teams from 1936-1939, Mickey Mantle’s from 1949-1953 and Derek Jeter’s from 1998-2000.
The sport’s only other three-peat champions were Reggie Jackson’s Oakland Athletics from 1972-1974.
Shohei Ohtani’s Dodgers will have more than the chance to join those teams. They will have a chance to overtake them as the greatest team in history.
“We’re ready,” manager Dave Roberts said.
The season opener at Dodger Stadium on Thursday night against the Diamondbacks will mark what could be the anchor leg of a journey that started well over a decade ago when the Dodgers were purchased by Guggenheim Sports Management in 2012.
The Dodgers have fielded some great teams over the last 14 years: World Series champions in 2020, 2024 and 2025; National League champions in 2017 and 2018; and 12 NL West champions.
None of them were as talented as the team they have now.
Their lineup consists of three former Most Valuable Players in Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. Four others have made All-Star teams, including Kyle Tucker, their new $240 million right fielder.
The stage is set for Ohtani to have the greatest season of a career in which he has already won four MVP awards. At 31, he is at his physical peak. Now 2 ½ years removed from his most recent elbow operation, he should be able to play both ways without any limitations.
Ohtani should compete for the Cy Young Award, but he has legitimate competition on his own team. The Dodgers’ rotation has three other legitimate candidates for the award in Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow. Snell will start the season on the injured list with inflammation. That would be a major concern for 29 teams but not the Dodgers.
Their bullpen was a problem last year. They overcame the shortcoming by moving some of their starters into relief roles in the postseason. Roki Sasaki became the team’s closer. Glasnow pitched three games out of the bullpen. Yamamoto pitched the final 2 ⅔ innings of Game 7 of the World Series.
The Dodgers addressed the issue this winter by acquiring the best reliever on the free agent market: three-time All-Star Edwin Diaz.
In addition to returning to the nucleus of their team, the two-time defending champions added the No. 1 hitter and No. 1 reliever available.
The talent alone would make the Dodgers the favorites to win the World Series, but their culture is what has given them an air of invincibility.
“It’s kind of the hallmark of our club,” Roberts said. “Nothing really fazes us. Our guys don’t let anything affect them, whether it’s travel, the schedule, the opponent, whether there’s unforeseen circumstances. We will go out there and play baseball.”
The quality explains how they reversed a series deficit against the more talented Padres in the 2024 postseason. Or how they came back from a mediocre start by a depleted Ohtani on the mound against the Blue Jays in Game 7 of the World Series last year.
Success hasn’t affected them, either. The Dodgers now have several players in their mid- to late-30s who have made tens of millions of dollars. But none of them sound as if they’re ready to wind down their careers.
Teoscar Hernandez dropped weight. Betts started working with Yamamoto’s personal trainer as part of an effort to return to MVP-caliber form. Glasnow packed on weight with hopes he could avoid injury and have the best season of his career.
“To me, it kind of starts from top-down,” Muncy said. “You have an ownership and front office that is making a statement to its players when they bring in new guys every single year: ‘Hey, we’re not complacent with just winning one. We want to keep winning. We want to keep performing well.’ That, in itself, sends a message to everyone else that, hey, no one cares that you won one. This is a completely new year. Your goal is to win this year.”
An unclear future should only increase that urgency. Team owners are pushing for a luxury tax, and players will almost certainly be locked out once the season ends. When the sport resumes, the Dodgers could be playing in an entirely different economic environment. Their financial edge could be reduced by several orders of magnitude.
But there’s no point in looking ahead. The Dodgers have now, and now could be the start of a season in which they scale heights that no team has ever scaled before.