The Los Angeles Dodgers have been world champions for less than 12 hours, but they’re already favored to be in the exact same place one year from today.
BetMGM released their odds for the 2025 World Series champion on Thursday morning, and the Dodgers lead the pack at +400 to win it all and become the first repeat World Series champs since the 2000 New York Yankees.
Behind the Dodgers are a familiar list of teams, many of which we saw in the earlier rounds of this year’s playoffs. The Yankees are tied with the Atlanta Braves in second at +800, and the Baltimore Orioles and Philadelphia Phillies are third at +1100.
The Dodgers could be even better next year
As dominant as the Dodgers looked this postseason, they entered October with an enormous headwind in the form of injuries to their rotation. They beat the San Diego Padres, New York Mets and Yankees, all 2025 contenders, with only three usable starting pitchers.
Things might be a bit different next season, barring a similar run of awful injury misfortune. While Game 1 starter Jack Flaherty and Game 3 starter Walker Buehler are both pending free agents, Yoshinobu Yamamoto is coming back, as are Gavin Stone, Tyler Glasnow and, most tantalizingly of all, the pitching side of Shohei Ohtani.
That’s four spots in the rotation already solidified for the Dodgers, with the potential returns of Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May and Bobby Miller all waiting in the wings after lost 2024 seasons. Clayton Kershaw also holds a player option for 2025 and has announced his intention to return.
Any of the above players could encounter more injuries in 2025, but it’s hard not to see 2024 as a worst-case scenario that the Dodgers more than survived. They lost more than a rotation’s worth of pitchers and still came out of it with a trophy, and now they could add even more pitchers to the mix this offseason.
What could the Dodgers do this offseason?
The Dodgers are already well set up for 2025, but that doesn’t mean their offseason to-do list is empty.
In addition to the above starting pitching situation, Los Angeles’ pending free agents include outfielder Teoscar Hernández, top reliever Blake Treinen, trusted reliever Daniel Hudson, shortstop Miguel Rojas and utility man Kiké Hernández.
Re-signing the first Hernández will be the biggest priority, unless the Dodgers think they can do better. It would be hard to do so, given that Hernández has been a consistent middle-of-the-order bat who has repeatedly come up clutch, but it was reported earlier this week that the Dodgers were kicking the tires on a bid for Yankees star Juan Soto.
We don’t need to ponder too long how outrageous it would be for the Dodgers to sign Ohtani to a $700 million contract, win a World Series and then sign Soto to a similar mega-contract. But the possibility is there.
Meanwhile, Treinen and Hudson were both important arms for the Dodgers this season, but the team’s track record of finding ace relievers out of nowhere diminishes the chances that the team spends big on the bullpen this winter.
Shortstop will also be a need if Rojas and the other Hernández leave, though the possibility of parking Tommy Edman or Mookie Betts at that position means the Dodgers could look for outfield help instead, depending on how the market shapes up. Either way, they probably need a couple more position players.
And then there’s Roki Sasaki.
Could the Dodgers sign Roki Sasaki?
Roki Sasaki is a 22-year-old Japanese right-hander who has loomed as one of the more tantalizing pitching prospects in baseball history over the past few years. He throws 100 mph with regularity, he has two devastating secondary pitches and he threw a 19-strikeout perfect game in 2022.
Sasaki could very well be posted to MLB this offseason, though it’s not a certainty. His team, the Chiba Lotte Marines, wouldn’t want him to, so it would come down to if he is able to get enough leverage to force a posting. If he is posted, every team in baseball will be interested. After all, how often can you land a potential superstar pitcher whom you don’t really have to pay for six years?
Because he is under the age of 25, Sasaki would be subject to international bonus pools as a free agent, rather than commanding a mega-contract like Yamamoto’s last offseason. It’s the same thing Ohtani did before the 2018 season, when every interested team had to sell the player on why they were the best situation for him without money as an incentive.
The Dodgers are normally up for a financial fight, but they have plenty to offer Sasaki beyond that. They already have two Japanese stars in Ohtani and Yamamoto to aid the transition and take pressure off Sasaki, with the biggest Japanese population of any MLB market and enormous cultural cachet in his home country.
And now they can promise not only a perennial contender but a World Series champion team as well. The Dodgers have long loomed as major contenders, if not the favorites, should Sasaki be posted, but they could be particularly well-positioned this offseason.
Read the full article here
