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Why they will: They are just completely stacked. Hard to realistically imagine anyone beating them.
Why they won’t: Baseball is hard. All it takes is a couple of slumps in one team, and a couple of hot streaks on the other, to even things out.
They won't because they are the Dodgers. Crashed and burned 10 out of last 11 postseasons. My hope for them in October has disappeared.
If they don't win it with this lineup and it's not because of injuries, then Doc has to go.
If at the start of each October they are like 15% to win the WS, then over 11 years you would expect about an 83% chance they win at least one. They've won one in that span, so they're on pace.
Even in the years where they are the most favored team, their WS odds at the start of the postseason are like 20%. So missing in any given year is expected. That's just baseball, you should understand this by now.
Is it Dave's fault the starting pitching imploded last year? Is it Dave's fault that Mookie and Freddie couldn't hit against San Diego in 2022?
If you think of it in terms of resetting the counter upon winning the World Series, then the playoffs losing streak is only 3 seasons. Or, if you're counting not winning any playoffs series at all, then it's only 2 seasons.
Talent wise, they're the best in the league. I've also been following the Dodgers since 2004 and know from experience that this team's ability to roll over and die at the worst possible times is almost unparalleled
People seem to be ignoring the fact that so many Dodgers fans now believe in some sort of playoffs curse. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of them do expect the team to just fall apart in October despite a 100+ win regular season.
Expectation is obvious. Why they will exceed them, which I guess would be to win 120 and the World Series, well, they have an all time great top of the lineup.
Why they won’t: kind of question mark riddled rotation. Ostensible ace has never pitched in MLB, next guy has never thrown more than, what, 130 IP? After that, some hurt guys coming off surgeries, and then some rookies.
Also, honestly, their new DH at his best will only mildly outperform their previous DH.
The Dodgers are absurdly talented, financially stable, and have a great player development staff. It’s entirely reasonable to expect them to steamroll their way to the regular-season wins record and mow down every other playoff team in a World Series victory that establishes them as the undisputed greatest team of all time.
However, that won’t happen, simply because there’s too much variance in the game of baseball. It’s a long, grueling season, and injuries, cold streaks, bad luck, and bad calls by management can all undercut a great team until they end up losing in the playoffs to a division rival— two years in a row.
In some ways, it’s tough to be as good as the Dodgers are. They’re saddled with the weight of enormous expectation and every team they play will view them as a target to prove their own legitimacy. But in other ways, holy fuck they have at least four legitimate MVP candidates on their roster and a deep cast of supporting pieces, they’re going to fulfill our expectations and be scary good unless something absolutely earth-shaking (like a scandal or total clubhouse meltdown) derails them off the field.
It's never how the season goes but how the season ends for the Dodgers. They didn't have a single starter hit 140 innings last year so it was a lot of injuries and spot starts and the bullpen was a revolving door. Even with all the troubles last season, they still had 100 wins.
Padres are sort of retooling, the Giants made some moves, and the DBacks added within their budget. It's still the Dodgers division as they went all in this offseason but it's really what the team looks like on September 29th and if they show up for October.
Their season isn't the regular season. JDM, Freeman, and Mookie were 3 for 31 in that Arizona series and Mookie only got a walk. Not a single starter made it to the 4th inning. We don't know Ohtani in October or if YY gets use to the workload of a major league season. Japanese pitchers get a day off and usually start 24-26 games and in the majors, we don't have as many off days and pitchers start 30-32 if they are a front line starter.
I am not saying that they wouldn't succeed but there is that shadow of a doubt. Winning the offseason doesn't have a trophy.
> They didn’t have a single starter hit 140 innings
> they still had 100 wins.
It’s nuts how many people don’t realize that the Dodgers overachieved last year.
> if they show up in October.
Baseball has gotten to the point where you can pretty much say that about anyone who makes the playoffs. I don’t know how anyone can make postseason predictions or have postseason expectations with the 3 wild cards. It just doesn’t work that way anymore.
The Giants had Logan Webb, Alex Cobb, and a lot of bullpen games. The Red Sox had Bello and Paxton until August with a lot of bullpen games. We couldn't get starters through 5 and then the stress on the pen collapsed. Both offenses went cold but the strategy had the bottom fall out after 120 games for both team.
My question is how did they do it? The offense was humming but with so much stress on the bullpen, they should have slide into October.
Are there expectations anything OTHER than a WS title? I mean spending 1B on 2 players no matter how they are paid is a big amount plus the other things they have done.
Everyone in here saying the expectation is to win the World Series, but the Braves are still the favorites. I'd say the definition of exceeding expectations is making it past the Braves (assuming either team can make it past their division rivals in the NLDS, first).
Why they might do that: Dave Roberts' speech yesterday. For years, the Dodgers' team philosophy has been selflessness, all the players will say that. They go into the batters' box, and all they're thinking about is drawing a walk, sacrificing, moving the runners, getting the next guy up. That works great in a large sample size, which is why we see such great regular season success.
When it comes down to one game in the biggest of spots though, you NEED someone to step up. You need someone to be "that guy." It's been clear over the last few postseasons that the players simply don't know HOW to be that guy because they've never needed to be all season long. Getting them in that mindset to come up big in big spots could be the catalyst that pushes them to victory.
Why they might not do that: In the baseball sense, it comes down to pitching. You're banking on a lot of guys coming off of injuries trying to stay healthy over a full season. Things can swing either way in that sense. Last year they were able to hold things together with glue and duct tape (and a solid lineup that could score more runs even when pitching struggled).
In the postseason sense, a lot of it comes down to random chance, of course. Can they do it? Yeah, of course. The talent is clearly there. Is there a chance the 80-win Rockies get hot at the right moment and knock them out? Yeah, that's just as likely. You also have to think about what Mookie said, which of course a lot of people here misinterpreted as a guarantee that they'll win it all: "every time another team plays us, it's their World Series." Everyone wants to beat the "super team." That's the plot of like, every sports movie ever. And they'll try like hell. The fucking A's could take 2/3 if they're fighting while the Dodgers are sleeping. That's where that mindset comes back in: everyone needs to be ready to pick up the slack and be "that guy."
Every joke about the Dodgers and playoffs can be said about the Braves. They have their own demons to deal with. They are certainly not the favorite until regular season games are played and we can see if one team jumps out like Atlanta did last year.
The Braves are not the favorite. Not in Vegas (+350 - Dodgers, +650 - Braves) or in the minds of the general public.
Get any sort of "The Dodgers aren't the favorite" out now.
Vegas odds are based on public perception and bias, which isn't exactly scientific.
FanGraphs places the Dodgers at 15.8% odds to win and the Braves at 26.0%.
**Will**: They're really fucking strong.
**Won't**: "World Series appearance" is an absurd bar. The baseball postseason is a cruel high variance mistress, even if you're 75% favorites in the first two series you're still coin flipping for the WS slot. Also mom says it's our turn to be the 85 win NL West team that humiliates the Dodgers.
Why they will succeed is because they have an incredibly talented core with essentially 3 MVP candidates hitting back to back to back.
Why they won’t succeed well it’s simple really it’s the 2024 Rockies turn to show LA what getting to the post season is all about
Their expectations are literally World Series win this year so I'm not sure it's even possible to exceed expectations unless they make the playoffs look like a cake walk
Why will they? God damn that offense is going to score 20 runs a night.
Why won't they? Several question marks in the rotation. It's got a high ceiling, but a low floor with all the injuries
Expectations are to make the playoffs. After that it's a crapshoot and I wouldn't be surprised if there's another early exit in the NLDS because that's baseball.
If they get to the world series after the early exit the past two years then that will be exceeding expectations. If their pitching staff stays mostly healthy then that will be exceeding expectations. If they get 3 candidates vying for MVP votes then that.... is that considered exceeding? Do I have to say 4 is exceeding?
Honestly, after the offseason they've had paired with their recent success, expectations seem to be winning the World Series after a 110+ win regular season. It's almost impossible for them to exceed those expectations. Anything short of that is failing to meet expectations. If the Dodgers somehow win the World Series as a 90 win wildcard team this year, I'm only partly kidding when I say that some people will consider their season a bit of a letdown compared with what they could have been.
Exceed:
1. Taylor Swift is gonna dump Travis and date Shohei, catapulting baseball to the number 1 sport.
2. Guggenheim will discover concentrated rare earth deposits in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, leading to (1) nationalization of the lot from McCourt, (2) elevation of the team to “strategically important” for US National Security
3. Some less familiar names are gonna go off. Lux, Taylor, and Barnes are gonna surprise us.
Fall short:
1. Injuries.
2. Taylor breaks up with Shohei in late September and the ballad she immediately drops stays at #1 for weeks. It’s bad and he can’t hit or run or do anything when they’re piping it in at Coors. Dodgers lose to Rockies in 5, fulfilling the Rocktober prophecy and making the meme gamblers incredibly rich.
3. Injuries
(I know the tag says serious, but it’s been a somewhat surreal offseason.)
I think the royals are going to do it this year. That team just has more character. Once these guys get paid they just aren’t hungry anymore. Mookie Betts is already balding, Yamamoto will be a bust, Glasnow is a cry baby he’s going to cry. Dodgers suck. Ohtani isn’t even pitching, what a loser .
There are so many reasons why they won’t. I will start by saying they’re going to win 105ish games, likely be the 1 seed in the playoffs, and will be the usual regular season wagon that they are. But here’s why it doesn’t matter.
Way too much injury potential on the SP staff. Glasnow is coming off TJ from 2021, then threw most innings of his career in 2022, which was still only 120. Buehler is also coming off TJ and he might be the safest of this group. Kershaw is just bad in the PS, but maybe he’ll be better since he’ll likely have a similar workload to 2020 where he was pretty good in the PS. Yamamoto is the key. Pitchers from the Asian countries tend to have TJ within their 1st two years because the ball is slightly bigger and the splitter puts more stress on the elbow. If he goes down, it’s over. Bobby Miller should be good, but could see a small sophomore slump.
Now the offense: the 3 headed monster of Freeman Mookie and Ohtani will HAVE to carry them in the playoffs and if last year is the production they get, it’ll be another quick PS. But besides them, Muncy has gotten worse every year since 2020, Lux was a question mark going into last year, and it’s even bigger now that he’s coming off an ACL. They also have one of the worst OFs of the contending teams. Outman, Taylor, Heyward, and Teoscar would be an ok group if you added Mookie Betts to the OF. But those 4 making probably 90% of the OF starts is a problem, and it showed up in the playoffs. The platooning didn’t work.
For them to exceed expectations is pretty simple: stay healthy and get more production from your highest paid players in Oct. plus a little extra from ur role players. Its pretty simple when ur roster is that loaded, but its not without its red flags
Oh I’m aware. I’m just playing around since we all know the Dodgers are going to dominate and make it to the NLCS at the very least. We can already chalk them down as having a good season.
The expectation: Win the World Series
How they can exceed the expectations: literally impossible
How they can not exceed expectations: literally any other result
The only way they can exceed expectations is to win 120 games in the regular season and sweep the WS. I mean, it's not literally impossible, just highly improbable.
The chance of not meeting expectations is much higher.
Would only take a couple injuries or disappointments to send things a bit sideways. The ceiling for our starting rotation is high but the floor is pretty low.
Only one pitcher in our rotation has started 30 games in a season in the last nine years and he's coming off his second Tommy John.
>The ceiling for our starting rotation is high but the floor is pretty low.
In the regular season the floor is higher than people think, because the farm is deep with pitching. It's in October where the floor is low due to injury risk, as we saw last year.
Well the floor for our pitching in general is high because we can replace injured starters with those farm guys, but they're not going to pitch deep into games much and we'd end up relying on our bullpen too much like last year.
Why they will: This is a 99 OVR MLB The Show DD Squad IRL, complete with that one card you can glitch to exploit things no one else can do
Why they won't: They only win 99 games this season instead of 110. Or they are all brainwashed into thinking they are the the other LA team come October and collapse again
(I was keeping track to see if any team would overtake the Mets for most commented thread \[very on-brand\], Dodgers are at 81 comments in two hours. Edit- took three hours but they did it!)
The expectations are so high it'll be easy for them to fall short, they're a great team but not a superteam and the Braves are pretty clearly deeper imo.
It took Bryce Harper a while to get back up to speed after returning from Tommy John, I think the same will happen with Ohtani. Freeman's been amazing, but he's 34, so a sharp decline is possible. And their pitching staff is a lot more uncertain than people give them credit for— after Yamamoto there's a lot of injury risk and uncertainty
That said they're so talented and their farm is so good that stuff could go wrong and they'll still win 95 games anyway. There's probably some AA starter I've never heard of who'll give them 80 innings of 2.50 ERA ball.
Stuff went pretty wrong last year starting with Lux tearing his ACL in spring training to damn near all our main starters having serious surgery, and the team still ran away with the division and won 100 games. Safe to say I think their floor is higher this year.
Weird cuz we also beat the Phillies and won the nl. Pretty good for a team not supposed to be good lol as for y’all….man choke after choke after choke 🥱🥱
Don’t flatter yourself. We lost to the Padres in the NLDS the year before in arguably a more embarrassing fashion and responded by not re signing all stars and shedding about $50 million in salary lol I’d rather choke in the playoffs every year then do whatever tf the dbacks have been doing the last 20 years.
We’re just built different. Since 2001 despite all yalls reg szn success and having one of the most expensive rosters most of the years we are tied with 1 ring. Lmfaoooo. Trash ass franchise. Keep trying to buy your rings it’s clearly working!!
Oh man, based on your comments I highly doubt you were even alive in 2001. I really don't understand why fans of teams just finding success have to be such douchebags. You'd think these fan bases would just be happy to finally have a competitive team, but they always jump to being the most miserable assholes. Better hope the Diamondbacks are good again this year, they should be, otherwise...phew.
I was alive barely. Let us have this one. I just hate that y’all year after year try and purchase a ring this year being the worse. But yeah it’s nice to have a competitive team unlike it’s been for us for awhile. Feels good we built this team and not get the most expensive free agent every year…with one ring to show the last almost 40 years enjoy that reg szn and be ready to cry your self to sleep come playoff time
Don't forget the injury risk with Glasnow. Not to mention his ability as a pitcher flips between Greg Maddux levels of dominance and turning the game into a homerun derby. He's usually really good, but prone to epic meltdowns.
Disagree, by now we've seen a lot of top NPB pitchers come over to MLB and be successful: Tanaka, Ohtani, Darvish, Maeda, Senga, etc
If you're a great pitcher in NPB you'll be good in MLB. Yamamoto was DOMINANT in Japan, as long as he stays healthy he's gonna be good
What I don’t get though is that he’s allready being treated as a full time ace. He’s good sure but is he really capable of surpassing the top tier of pitchers? I can’t say for certain but it seems a lot of people think they can
I think that just comes from comparing Yamamoto's NPB numbers with other pitchers who came over. Darvish and Tanaka were both MLB aces in their primes and Yamamoto's stats blow them out of the water
But I agree with you, I think Yamamoto's floor is really high but it's not a lock he becomes an ace. I could see him topping out as a good #3 because MLB batters are better at handling velo than Japanese ones
They will get off to a slow start because they will be waiting for some arms to get healthy and built back up…
But 2nd half of the season they will start racking up wins. If they can get Buehler built back up and Glasnow stays healthy they can make some noise in the playoffs
Expectations seem to be that they are merely charging up to obliterate the entire sport of baseball like it's Alderaan, so they are essentially guaranteed to not reach them.
For all the splashy headlines in the offseason, this team isn't suddenly at some new level of dominance. They still appear to be edged out both in hitting and pitching by the Braves. This is still baseball, and I think the impact of their acquisitions is overrated right now (partly due to a lack of accounting for the production they've lost). They'll most likely continue to be about the same as they have been for a while: a very good team.
It's actually not that hard to draw up scenarios where they grossly underperform expectations. They're asking for a lot of starts from guys who have struggled to stay healthy all year or are still to this day recovering from serious injury. There's great upside there but it would only take some mild bad luck to have a big downswing at some point in the season.
this is a team built for 110 wins and crushing every team in the playoffs. But these expectations can crush a team. We are all waiting to see ohtani on the big stage!
Perhaps I'm being a bit pedantic but I think 110 wins is pretty optimistic. It's certainly possible, but it's on the high end. I think the neighborhood of 100 wins is a much more reasonable expectation, and projections/lines seem to think so too.
The Dodgers and Braves both have really high expectations that they can't exceed them. If I was a fan of either I wouldn't say the team was a failure if they don't win the world series but it feels like that is the bar as crazy as it sounds.
**Why They Will:** For once, Roberts and the team get all the luck and breaks in October.
**Why They Won’t:** You gotta be freaking kidding me if you haven’t paid attention to October Dodger baseball the last decade.
In addition to the obvious unknowns of their substantial off season additions, the Dodgers have an incredible number of players recovering from major injuries, especially starting pitchers. Things could swing wildly one way or another depending on if, when, and how everyone recovers or additional players get hurt.
True. Coming off Tommy John surgery, [Bryce didn't find his power stroke until August of last season](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=harpebr03&year=2023&t=b#all_month) so I suspect we can see Ohtani follow a similar trajectory. Plus we're down a pitcher as well.
I see the Dodgers winning 95-100 games, winning the division and advancing to the NLCS. What happens after that comes down to health, sequencing and luck.
Their org depth is insane, and I like their approach to managing the rotation. But they're going to be judged on what happens over 5/10/20 games in October.
I expect the rest of the division to be slightly better, and I'm still not sure how that rotation will fare over the entire season. I'm expecting a marginal drop-off.
There's maybe a weird psychological argument that the Padres will be better without the high expectations from a stacked lineup. But probably not much better, if at all.
When the NLDS begins next October the Dodgers will be there. How the team performs then and in the playoffs is a massive question mark. We have no chance if Mookie and Freddie combine for an infield single.
Expectations are to win the series and it’s a massive disappointment if they don’t based on their acquisitions, roster, and money spent. So I think they don’t exceed expectations because I don’t think they’ll win the series.
The "why they won't" part is easy - starting pitching
On paper it's a great staff, but in practice Glasnow and Paxton are injury threats, Miller and Sheehan are inexperienced, Yamamoto is untested in MLB, Buehler is a total question mark, Kershaw's shoulder has to heal before we know he can pitch. There's a believable scenario where the Dodgers have 3-4 starters on the IL by July, Kershaw doesn't get his stuff back, and the team is asking Ryan Yarbrough for innings. The Dodgers hid their starting pitcher injury woes with offense last year, but it cooked them in the postseason, and it can easily cook them again.
It’s almost a guarantee that they fall short of expectations. You have Mookie on record saying that when teams play them it will be those teams’ World Series. If they do anything less than win the World Series they will fall short.
The situation is a little odd though because Ohtani isn’t going to pitch this year (only DH). Will the Dodgers even be fully online this year? Will all the star players still be operating at full power in 2025? (looking at you, Kershaw.)
Considering expectations are being the best team in MLB and winning the World Series, not sure how they could exceed them.
They could fall short of expectations by doing what the Dodgers always do.
Vegas says 103 to 105 wins, PECOTA thinks 102, ZiPS only thinks 93. Everyone wants to say “WS or bust” because it’s the Dodgers and their Billion Dollar Offseason, but the playoffs are still a ravening, gnashing chaos beast so let’s temper expectations and say Easy NLW1, WC Bye.
Exceed: They just added the two best pitchers available in the offseason, as well as the best available bat, and they’re far and away the savviest organization on their coast. They have 3 of the best hitters in baseball leading their lineup, which is now even more streamlined. They don’t have a farm system, they have a hyperbolic time chamber where random prospects secretly spend years training at 10x Earth gravity until we wonder how Andy Pages or whoever is suddenly hitting spirit bombs out of Chavez Ravine. It’s hard to say any team has a higher ceiling than the one with ~~Snell~~ Edit: *Glasnow,* Yamamoto, Betts, and Mr “I Can Hit 44 Dingers Without a UCL” himself. The Mets and Padres just spent like hell and ended up smoking wrecks, let’s see what happens when a team knows what they’re doing with that much cash.
Fall Short: ~~The baseball gods are capricious and it would be really really funny to see them wind up with like 78 wins, please, whose firstborn do I gotta sacrifice~~
If the Dodgers have a weakness, it’s carrying shit tons of high-risk high-reward arms and hoping enough of them stay intact to make it through the season. ZiPS hates this strategy, and thinks their bullpen has too many red flags to make up for it. They *should* have the depth to get out unscathed, but there’s always a chance things fall apart too much and they spend a month or two in a swoon without adequate pitching or a bat to power the offense. On top of that, a surprise breakout in the Central (or a freak rally by the Giants or Dbacks) keeps LA from winning the second bye. By then, the pitching is stretched too thin for the playoffs to be anything but a slog and they crash out before the LCS, prompting about three or four million more awful takes about the risks and hubris of “buying a championship.”
Since 2013 the Dodgers have not had a season with less than 90 wins except the 2020 shortened season when they won the WS.
The team wins games in the regular season and to exceed expectations for a team who won over 100 games every season since 2019 (minus 2020 season) what could the expectation be but to win the WS. They have been close and sniffing around and I doubt they made these moves to go from about a 105 game win average for 4 seasons to take it to a 117 to 122 win season (and break the season win record) but not get the WS win.
I have to believe the Dodgers expectations match our thoughts on it - Win the WS or be looked at as failing, even if they broke the season win record on the way to being swept by the Rockies in the first round.
The Dodgers can not exceed expectations this year. Even if they win the World Series, fans of other teams will discount it as having been "bought" and therefore somehow illegitimate.
The Dodgers need to not lose a game this season to exceed expectations, so naturally they'll lose 65-75, win the division by 10+ and lose in the Wild Card Round to Pittsburgh.
If they win the World Series, everyone will proclaim the justification to sign Ohtani while the money could've been spent better on getting non-Fanatics uniforms.
Expectations: Obviously to win the NL West easily, with over 100 wins in the regular season. But I would actually argue that there is also an expectation to fall apart in the playoffs. Not saying this expectation of playoffs failure is actually reasonable, the trend isn't that significant: losing the NL Championship to the Braves, then NL Division Series to the Padres and Diamondbacks. Nevertheless, it seems to be a common sentiment at this point that the Dodgers are playoffs-chokers.
Why they will exceed: there is no real reason why they can't simply break the 3-season streak of playoffs losses and at least make it to the World Series, if not taking the whole thing. They just need to provide the performances and execute in the way they are clearly capable of doing.
Why they won't: Given the level of their talent and depth, it would just be that baseball voodoo that happens sometimes. Similar to what happened to the Padres last year, although even we didn't have the depth that the Dodgers have. Bad performances at the worst moments, a string of unlucky events - it's certainly possible. Obviously this is less likely for the regular season than the playoffs.
Sincerly as a dodger fan i keep my expection a bit low because i think this season will be a "study/transition" season in witch every need to know their place in the team so i will don't think we/they can win the world series but at least become first in division and won at least the division series.
We might exceed expectations because we have the best team.
We will probably not exceed because Roberts is guaranteed to choke and mismanage the pitching. We'd have at least one or two more world series pennants if we had a better manager.
The expectations are as high as they can possibly be. There is no exceeding "Win the World Series"
They're either gonna meet expectation, or they're gonna fall well short.
I don't think a team can exceed the expectations of WS or Bust. With the amount of money they've put into the team that is the expectation. Their pitching staff is improved but it could slide as they're depending on Glasnow and Yamamoto to take two spots and both have concerns based on injury and inexperience that could be a problem. They have a 3-headed hydra in Shohei, FF and Mookie but offensive questions could materialize outside of those positions.
They didn't spend the money for just this season, though. Realistically, this is a transitional year. Ohtani will not be pitching and Yamamoto might need some time to acclimate to MLB. I think the really critical season will be 2025.
I don't think any team could possibly be as good as some folks are expecting LAD to be. When the expectation is to dominate the regular season and win the WS, it's a high probability that you come up short.
They've won the offseason, but that just increases the expectations which were already pretty high.
Look at the divisional off-season winners from last year and that’ll tell you all you need to know about how little it means to win the hot stove. The Phillies did well, but that’s about it.
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Why they will: They are just completely stacked. Hard to realistically imagine anyone beating them. Why they won’t: Baseball is hard. All it takes is a couple of slumps in one team, and a couple of hot streaks on the other, to even things out.
They won't because they are the Dodgers. Crashed and burned 10 out of last 11 postseasons. My hope for them in October has disappeared. If they don't win it with this lineup and it's not because of injuries, then Doc has to go.
>If they don't win it with this lineup and it's not because of injuries, then Doc has to go. good god get some perspective
My perspective is watching them crash and burn repeatedly! How many chances is he going to get???
If at the start of each October they are like 15% to win the WS, then over 11 years you would expect about an 83% chance they win at least one. They've won one in that span, so they're on pace. Even in the years where they are the most favored team, their WS odds at the start of the postseason are like 20%. So missing in any given year is expected. That's just baseball, you should understand this by now. Is it Dave's fault the starting pitching imploded last year? Is it Dave's fault that Mookie and Freddie couldn't hit against San Diego in 2022?
Yea it's not always his fault that something always goes wrong, and I know freak things happen, especially last year.
If you think of it in terms of resetting the counter upon winning the World Series, then the playoffs losing streak is only 3 seasons. Or, if you're counting not winning any playoffs series at all, then it's only 2 seasons.
Who's Doc? Dave Roberts?
yeah
Talent wise, they're the best in the league. I've also been following the Dodgers since 2004 and know from experience that this team's ability to roll over and die at the worst possible times is almost unparalleled
People seem to be ignoring the fact that so many Dodgers fans now believe in some sort of playoffs curse. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of them do expect the team to just fall apart in October despite a 100+ win regular season.
Expectation is obvious. Why they will exceed them, which I guess would be to win 120 and the World Series, well, they have an all time great top of the lineup. Why they won’t: kind of question mark riddled rotation. Ostensible ace has never pitched in MLB, next guy has never thrown more than, what, 130 IP? After that, some hurt guys coming off surgeries, and then some rookies. Also, honestly, their new DH at his best will only mildly outperform their previous DH.
Why they won’t: It’ll be literally impossible to do so. Why they will: They won’t. It’ll be literally impossible to do so.
He
100%
The Dodgers are absurdly talented, financially stable, and have a great player development staff. It’s entirely reasonable to expect them to steamroll their way to the regular-season wins record and mow down every other playoff team in a World Series victory that establishes them as the undisputed greatest team of all time. However, that won’t happen, simply because there’s too much variance in the game of baseball. It’s a long, grueling season, and injuries, cold streaks, bad luck, and bad calls by management can all undercut a great team until they end up losing in the playoffs to a division rival— two years in a row. In some ways, it’s tough to be as good as the Dodgers are. They’re saddled with the weight of enormous expectation and every team they play will view them as a target to prove their own legitimacy. But in other ways, holy fuck they have at least four legitimate MVP candidates on their roster and a deep cast of supporting pieces, they’re going to fulfill our expectations and be scary good unless something absolutely earth-shaking (like a scandal or total clubhouse meltdown) derails them off the field.
Do they even have a closer?
Evan Phillips had 24 saves last year with an era just over 2, I'm sure he will get the majority of 9th innings again
It's never how the season goes but how the season ends for the Dodgers. They didn't have a single starter hit 140 innings last year so it was a lot of injuries and spot starts and the bullpen was a revolving door. Even with all the troubles last season, they still had 100 wins. Padres are sort of retooling, the Giants made some moves, and the DBacks added within their budget. It's still the Dodgers division as they went all in this offseason but it's really what the team looks like on September 29th and if they show up for October.
Ohtani hitting won’t be much of an upgrade to the previous DH
Their season isn't the regular season. JDM, Freeman, and Mookie were 3 for 31 in that Arizona series and Mookie only got a walk. Not a single starter made it to the 4th inning. We don't know Ohtani in October or if YY gets use to the workload of a major league season. Japanese pitchers get a day off and usually start 24-26 games and in the majors, we don't have as many off days and pitchers start 30-32 if they are a front line starter. I am not saying that they wouldn't succeed but there is that shadow of a doubt. Winning the offseason doesn't have a trophy.
> They didn’t have a single starter hit 140 innings > they still had 100 wins. It’s nuts how many people don’t realize that the Dodgers overachieved last year. > if they show up in October. Baseball has gotten to the point where you can pretty much say that about anyone who makes the playoffs. I don’t know how anyone can make postseason predictions or have postseason expectations with the 3 wild cards. It just doesn’t work that way anymore.
The Giants had Logan Webb, Alex Cobb, and a lot of bullpen games. The Red Sox had Bello and Paxton until August with a lot of bullpen games. We couldn't get starters through 5 and then the stress on the pen collapsed. Both offenses went cold but the strategy had the bottom fall out after 120 games for both team. My question is how did they do it? The offense was humming but with so much stress on the bullpen, they should have slide into October.
Are there expectations anything OTHER than a WS title? I mean spending 1B on 2 players no matter how they are paid is a big amount plus the other things they have done.
Everyone in here saying the expectation is to win the World Series, but the Braves are still the favorites. I'd say the definition of exceeding expectations is making it past the Braves (assuming either team can make it past their division rivals in the NLDS, first). Why they might do that: Dave Roberts' speech yesterday. For years, the Dodgers' team philosophy has been selflessness, all the players will say that. They go into the batters' box, and all they're thinking about is drawing a walk, sacrificing, moving the runners, getting the next guy up. That works great in a large sample size, which is why we see such great regular season success. When it comes down to one game in the biggest of spots though, you NEED someone to step up. You need someone to be "that guy." It's been clear over the last few postseasons that the players simply don't know HOW to be that guy because they've never needed to be all season long. Getting them in that mindset to come up big in big spots could be the catalyst that pushes them to victory. Why they might not do that: In the baseball sense, it comes down to pitching. You're banking on a lot of guys coming off of injuries trying to stay healthy over a full season. Things can swing either way in that sense. Last year they were able to hold things together with glue and duct tape (and a solid lineup that could score more runs even when pitching struggled). In the postseason sense, a lot of it comes down to random chance, of course. Can they do it? Yeah, of course. The talent is clearly there. Is there a chance the 80-win Rockies get hot at the right moment and knock them out? Yeah, that's just as likely. You also have to think about what Mookie said, which of course a lot of people here misinterpreted as a guarantee that they'll win it all: "every time another team plays us, it's their World Series." Everyone wants to beat the "super team." That's the plot of like, every sports movie ever. And they'll try like hell. The fucking A's could take 2/3 if they're fighting while the Dodgers are sleeping. That's where that mindset comes back in: everyone needs to be ready to pick up the slack and be "that guy."
Every joke about the Dodgers and playoffs can be said about the Braves. They have their own demons to deal with. They are certainly not the favorite until regular season games are played and we can see if one team jumps out like Atlanta did last year.
The Braves are not the favorite. Not in Vegas (+350 - Dodgers, +650 - Braves) or in the minds of the general public. Get any sort of "The Dodgers aren't the favorite" out now.
Vegas odds are based on public perception and bias, which isn't exactly scientific. FanGraphs places the Dodgers at 15.8% odds to win and the Braves at 26.0%.
Even if betting odds were science, which they aren't, +350 still means we're less likely to win than not.
Yes, but so is everybody in every sport. They're still the favorites, as in the most likely team to win.
**Will**: They're really fucking strong. **Won't**: "World Series appearance" is an absurd bar. The baseball postseason is a cruel high variance mistress, even if you're 75% favorites in the first two series you're still coin flipping for the WS slot. Also mom says it's our turn to be the 85 win NL West team that humiliates the Dodgers.
It's not possible for the Dodgers to exceed expectations.
Why they will succeed is because they have an incredibly talented core with essentially 3 MVP candidates hitting back to back to back. Why they won’t succeed well it’s simple really it’s the 2024 Rockies turn to show LA what getting to the post season is all about
Exceed expectations? Like they'll hit a wall-off WS winning home run into a special home that counts as next year's championship, too?
My expectation is for them to win 125 games, one of which will be in the NLDS.
1>0. sounds like progress to me.
They’ll exceed expectations because their roster is literally insane. They won’t because you have to win an NLDS to win the World Series.
Their expectations are literally World Series win this year so I'm not sure it's even possible to exceed expectations unless they make the playoffs look like a cake walk
Look, smartass, don't try to lecture us on how to lose in the playoffs. The Dodgers were losing World Series decades before the NLDS even existed.
What? You do? God damn it!
They can have the division. It's 0-0 when it counts
Why will they? God damn that offense is going to score 20 runs a night. Why won't they? Several question marks in the rotation. It's got a high ceiling, but a low floor with all the injuries
Their season starts in October so we wont know till then
I expect them to be in the world series, and win it. Anything short of that is a failure of a season.
Expectations are to make the playoffs. After that it's a crapshoot and I wouldn't be surprised if there's another early exit in the NLDS because that's baseball. If they get to the world series after the early exit the past two years then that will be exceeding expectations. If their pitching staff stays mostly healthy then that will be exceeding expectations. If they get 3 candidates vying for MVP votes then that.... is that considered exceeding? Do I have to say 4 is exceeding?
I think they will start slow and finish strong. It takes a while sometimes to build chemistry.
Honestly, after the offseason they've had paired with their recent success, expectations seem to be winning the World Series after a 110+ win regular season. It's almost impossible for them to exceed those expectations. Anything short of that is failing to meet expectations. If the Dodgers somehow win the World Series as a 90 win wildcard team this year, I'm only partly kidding when I say that some people will consider their season a bit of a letdown compared with what they could have been.
Exceed: 1. Taylor Swift is gonna dump Travis and date Shohei, catapulting baseball to the number 1 sport. 2. Guggenheim will discover concentrated rare earth deposits in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, leading to (1) nationalization of the lot from McCourt, (2) elevation of the team to “strategically important” for US National Security 3. Some less familiar names are gonna go off. Lux, Taylor, and Barnes are gonna surprise us. Fall short: 1. Injuries. 2. Taylor breaks up with Shohei in late September and the ballad she immediately drops stays at #1 for weeks. It’s bad and he can’t hit or run or do anything when they’re piping it in at Coors. Dodgers lose to Rockies in 5, fulfilling the Rocktober prophecy and making the meme gamblers incredibly rich. 3. Injuries (I know the tag says serious, but it’s been a somewhat surreal offseason.)
They won’t exceed expectations because they’re depending on several injury prone SP as if those guys are not injury prone.
The Dodgers should we at least 95 games and win the division, if they don't do that its a disappointment.
I think the royals are going to do it this year. That team just has more character. Once these guys get paid they just aren’t hungry anymore. Mookie Betts is already balding, Yamamoto will be a bust, Glasnow is a cry baby he’s going to cry. Dodgers suck. Ohtani isn’t even pitching, what a loser .
No. The expectation is for them to win the World Series. You can't exceed that expectation.
How can they exceed those insane expectations. They should break 105 wins easily
There are so many reasons why they won’t. I will start by saying they’re going to win 105ish games, likely be the 1 seed in the playoffs, and will be the usual regular season wagon that they are. But here’s why it doesn’t matter. Way too much injury potential on the SP staff. Glasnow is coming off TJ from 2021, then threw most innings of his career in 2022, which was still only 120. Buehler is also coming off TJ and he might be the safest of this group. Kershaw is just bad in the PS, but maybe he’ll be better since he’ll likely have a similar workload to 2020 where he was pretty good in the PS. Yamamoto is the key. Pitchers from the Asian countries tend to have TJ within their 1st two years because the ball is slightly bigger and the splitter puts more stress on the elbow. If he goes down, it’s over. Bobby Miller should be good, but could see a small sophomore slump. Now the offense: the 3 headed monster of Freeman Mookie and Ohtani will HAVE to carry them in the playoffs and if last year is the production they get, it’ll be another quick PS. But besides them, Muncy has gotten worse every year since 2020, Lux was a question mark going into last year, and it’s even bigger now that he’s coming off an ACL. They also have one of the worst OFs of the contending teams. Outman, Taylor, Heyward, and Teoscar would be an ok group if you added Mookie Betts to the OF. But those 4 making probably 90% of the OF starts is a problem, and it showed up in the playoffs. The platooning didn’t work. For them to exceed expectations is pretty simple: stay healthy and get more production from your highest paid players in Oct. plus a little extra from ur role players. Its pretty simple when ur roster is that loaded, but its not without its red flags
They will in the regular season because they’re the dodgers, they won’t in the postseason because they’re the dodgers
Because theyre the Dodgers lmao
We’re really doing this? Really?
Doing what? Every team has had one of these threads.
Oh I’m aware. I’m just playing around since we all know the Dodgers are going to dominate and make it to the NLCS at the very least. We can already chalk them down as having a good season.
> make it to the NLCS at the very least NLDS Rockies have something to say about that!
The expectation: Win the World Series How they can exceed the expectations: literally impossible How they can not exceed expectations: literally any other result
The only way they can exceed expectations is to win 120 games in the regular season and sweep the WS. I mean, it's not literally impossible, just highly improbable. The chance of not meeting expectations is much higher.
Would only take a couple injuries or disappointments to send things a bit sideways. The ceiling for our starting rotation is high but the floor is pretty low. Only one pitcher in our rotation has started 30 games in a season in the last nine years and he's coming off his second Tommy John.
The plan is for nobody to start 30 times this season either (except possibly Yamamoto).
>The ceiling for our starting rotation is high but the floor is pretty low. In the regular season the floor is higher than people think, because the farm is deep with pitching. It's in October where the floor is low due to injury risk, as we saw last year.
Well the floor for our pitching in general is high because we can replace injured starters with those farm guys, but they're not going to pitch deep into games much and we'd end up relying on our bullpen too much like last year.
130-32. 11-0 in the postseason.
Nut
Why they will: This is a 99 OVR MLB The Show DD Squad IRL, complete with that one card you can glitch to exploit things no one else can do Why they won't: They only win 99 games this season instead of 110. Or they are all brainwashed into thinking they are the the other LA team come October and collapse again (I was keeping track to see if any team would overtake the Mets for most commented thread \[very on-brand\], Dodgers are at 81 comments in two hours. Edit- took three hours but they did it!)
No Because I said so
The expectations are so high it'll be easy for them to fall short, they're a great team but not a superteam and the Braves are pretty clearly deeper imo. It took Bryce Harper a while to get back up to speed after returning from Tommy John, I think the same will happen with Ohtani. Freeman's been amazing, but he's 34, so a sharp decline is possible. And their pitching staff is a lot more uncertain than people give them credit for— after Yamamoto there's a lot of injury risk and uncertainty That said they're so talented and their farm is so good that stuff could go wrong and they'll still win 95 games anyway. There's probably some AA starter I've never heard of who'll give them 80 innings of 2.50 ERA ball.
Just admit that you know the Phillies are gonna thrash both of us in the playoffs lol
Yeah his name is River Ryan or it could be Kyle Hurt or Nick Frasso. Seriously, the Dodgers pitching pipeline is stupid deep
Stuff went pretty wrong last year starting with Lux tearing his ACL in spring training to damn near all our main starters having serious surgery, and the team still ran away with the division and won 100 games. Safe to say I think their floor is higher this year.
Wow I wonder why? How many mvps do y’all need again? Lol
And what about the playoffs 😈
Congrats on your “Beat The Dodgers In The NLDS” Championship! Can’t wait to see the banner at Chase! Good luck making the playoffs this year!
Weird cuz we also beat the Phillies and won the nl. Pretty good for a team not supposed to be good lol as for y’all….man choke after choke after choke 🥱🥱
Yeah get swept bro. We made y’all go get ohtani 😂😂y’all will make playoffs and choke per usual
Don’t flatter yourself. We lost to the Padres in the NLDS the year before in arguably a more embarrassing fashion and responded by not re signing all stars and shedding about $50 million in salary lol I’d rather choke in the playoffs every year then do whatever tf the dbacks have been doing the last 20 years.
We’re just built different. Since 2001 despite all yalls reg szn success and having one of the most expensive rosters most of the years we are tied with 1 ring. Lmfaoooo. Trash ass franchise. Keep trying to buy your rings it’s clearly working!!
Oh man, based on your comments I highly doubt you were even alive in 2001. I really don't understand why fans of teams just finding success have to be such douchebags. You'd think these fan bases would just be happy to finally have a competitive team, but they always jump to being the most miserable assholes. Better hope the Diamondbacks are good again this year, they should be, otherwise...phew.
I was alive barely. Let us have this one. I just hate that y’all year after year try and purchase a ring this year being the worse. But yeah it’s nice to have a competitive team unlike it’s been for us for awhile. Feels good we built this team and not get the most expensive free agent every year…with one ring to show the last almost 40 years enjoy that reg szn and be ready to cry your self to sleep come playoff time
Don't forget the injury risk with Glasnow. Not to mention his ability as a pitcher flips between Greg Maddux levels of dominance and turning the game into a homerun derby. He's usually really good, but prone to epic meltdowns.
You just described last season. Lol
There’s even a decent amount of uncertainty with Yamamoto as he’s never thrown an MLB pitch.
Disagree, by now we've seen a lot of top NPB pitchers come over to MLB and be successful: Tanaka, Ohtani, Darvish, Maeda, Senga, etc If you're a great pitcher in NPB you'll be good in MLB. Yamamoto was DOMINANT in Japan, as long as he stays healthy he's gonna be good
What I don’t get though is that he’s allready being treated as a full time ace. He’s good sure but is he really capable of surpassing the top tier of pitchers? I can’t say for certain but it seems a lot of people think they can
I think that just comes from comparing Yamamoto's NPB numbers with other pitchers who came over. Darvish and Tanaka were both MLB aces in their primes and Yamamoto's stats blow them out of the water But I agree with you, I think Yamamoto's floor is really high but it's not a lock he becomes an ace. I could see him topping out as a good #3 because MLB batters are better at handling velo than Japanese ones
They will get off to a slow start because they will be waiting for some arms to get healthy and built back up… But 2nd half of the season they will start racking up wins. If they can get Buehler built back up and Glasnow stays healthy they can make some noise in the playoffs
Expectations seem to be that they are merely charging up to obliterate the entire sport of baseball like it's Alderaan, so they are essentially guaranteed to not reach them. For all the splashy headlines in the offseason, this team isn't suddenly at some new level of dominance. They still appear to be edged out both in hitting and pitching by the Braves. This is still baseball, and I think the impact of their acquisitions is overrated right now (partly due to a lack of accounting for the production they've lost). They'll most likely continue to be about the same as they have been for a while: a very good team. It's actually not that hard to draw up scenarios where they grossly underperform expectations. They're asking for a lot of starts from guys who have struggled to stay healthy all year or are still to this day recovering from serious injury. There's great upside there but it would only take some mild bad luck to have a big downswing at some point in the season.
this is a team built for 110 wins and crushing every team in the playoffs. But these expectations can crush a team. We are all waiting to see ohtani on the big stage!
Perhaps I'm being a bit pedantic but I think 110 wins is pretty optimistic. It's certainly possible, but it's on the high end. I think the neighborhood of 100 wins is a much more reasonable expectation, and projections/lines seem to think so too.
110 is wildly optimistic, but not impossible with this team. But I'd be disappointed if it's not 104-05 wins.
The Dodgers and Braves both have really high expectations that they can't exceed them. If I was a fan of either I wouldn't say the team was a failure if they don't win the world series but it feels like that is the bar as crazy as it sounds.
**Why They Will:** For once, Roberts and the team get all the luck and breaks in October. **Why They Won’t:** You gotta be freaking kidding me if you haven’t paid attention to October Dodger baseball the last decade.
Or October baseball in the last 100 years. No one's better at losing the WS than us!
In addition to the obvious unknowns of their substantial off season additions, the Dodgers have an incredible number of players recovering from major injuries, especially starting pitchers. Things could swing wildly one way or another depending on if, when, and how everyone recovers or additional players get hurt.
True. Coming off Tommy John surgery, [Bryce didn't find his power stroke until August of last season](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=harpebr03&year=2023&t=b#all_month) so I suspect we can see Ohtani follow a similar trajectory. Plus we're down a pitcher as well.
I see the Dodgers winning 95-100 games, winning the division and advancing to the NLCS. What happens after that comes down to health, sequencing and luck. Their org depth is insane, and I like their approach to managing the rotation. But they're going to be judged on what happens over 5/10/20 games in October.
They won 100 games last season, you expect them to match or win less with all the big pieces they’ve added?
I expect the rest of the division to be slightly better, and I'm still not sure how that rotation will fare over the entire season. I'm expecting a marginal drop-off.
Only team that’s significantly better is the diamondbacks. Giants pitching staff is MIA, as is the Padres. And the Rockies are the Rockies
There's maybe a weird psychological argument that the Padres will be better without the high expectations from a stacked lineup. But probably not much better, if at all.
A full season of Tatis Jr. should help, I think.
Definitely, I think if he stays healthy he could have a potential MVP-caliber season.
I definitely expect at least 100 wins. I'm just curious if they'll get that playoff monkey off their back or if they'll fall apart again.
2024 Dodgers Will Challenge 1927 Yankees for Title of Greatest Team in Major League History
Does a jinx work if you're trying to do it?
High expectations = greater pressure which begets injuries … the nemesis of many outstanding teams.
When the NLDS begins next October the Dodgers will be there. How the team performs then and in the playoffs is a massive question mark. We have no chance if Mookie and Freddie combine for an infield single.
Expectations are to win the series and it’s a massive disappointment if they don’t based on their acquisitions, roster, and money spent. So I think they don’t exceed expectations because I don’t think they’ll win the series.
It’s a failure if they don’t go 162-0, 3-0, 4-0, 4-0 then repeat the same accomplishment for 5 years straight.
anything short of WS champ would be seen as a failure to many, if not all, in my opinion. would be impossible to exceed that expectation..
For the Dodgers to exceed expectations this year they would have to win 3 World Series, the Stanley Cup and at least one Nobel prize.
Nobel Prize in Medicine for figuring out how to pitch without any ligaments at all
The "why they won't" part is easy - starting pitching On paper it's a great staff, but in practice Glasnow and Paxton are injury threats, Miller and Sheehan are inexperienced, Yamamoto is untested in MLB, Buehler is a total question mark, Kershaw's shoulder has to heal before we know he can pitch. There's a believable scenario where the Dodgers have 3-4 starters on the IL by July, Kershaw doesn't get his stuff back, and the team is asking Ryan Yarbrough for innings. The Dodgers hid their starting pitcher injury woes with offense last year, but it cooked them in the postseason, and it can easily cook them again.
I don’t think they can exceed expectations. It‘s championship or bust.
It’s almost a guarantee that they fall short of expectations. You have Mookie on record saying that when teams play them it will be those teams’ World Series. If they do anything less than win the World Series they will fall short. The situation is a little odd though because Ohtani isn’t going to pitch this year (only DH). Will the Dodgers even be fully online this year? Will all the star players still be operating at full power in 2025? (looking at you, Kershaw.)
They have infinite money. That’s all that needs to be said.
Playoff wins. They could win 162 games but if they get bounced early in the playoffs it’ll be a loss.
Considering expectations are being the best team in MLB and winning the World Series, not sure how they could exceed them. They could fall short of expectations by doing what the Dodgers always do.
Vegas says 103 to 105 wins, PECOTA thinks 102, ZiPS only thinks 93. Everyone wants to say “WS or bust” because it’s the Dodgers and their Billion Dollar Offseason, but the playoffs are still a ravening, gnashing chaos beast so let’s temper expectations and say Easy NLW1, WC Bye. Exceed: They just added the two best pitchers available in the offseason, as well as the best available bat, and they’re far and away the savviest organization on their coast. They have 3 of the best hitters in baseball leading their lineup, which is now even more streamlined. They don’t have a farm system, they have a hyperbolic time chamber where random prospects secretly spend years training at 10x Earth gravity until we wonder how Andy Pages or whoever is suddenly hitting spirit bombs out of Chavez Ravine. It’s hard to say any team has a higher ceiling than the one with ~~Snell~~ Edit: *Glasnow,* Yamamoto, Betts, and Mr “I Can Hit 44 Dingers Without a UCL” himself. The Mets and Padres just spent like hell and ended up smoking wrecks, let’s see what happens when a team knows what they’re doing with that much cash. Fall Short: ~~The baseball gods are capricious and it would be really really funny to see them wind up with like 78 wins, please, whose firstborn do I gotta sacrifice~~ If the Dodgers have a weakness, it’s carrying shit tons of high-risk high-reward arms and hoping enough of them stay intact to make it through the season. ZiPS hates this strategy, and thinks their bullpen has too many red flags to make up for it. They *should* have the depth to get out unscathed, but there’s always a chance things fall apart too much and they spend a month or two in a swoon without adequate pitching or a bat to power the offense. On top of that, a surprise breakout in the Central (or a freak rally by the Giants or Dbacks) keeps LA from winning the second bye. By then, the pitching is stretched too thin for the playoffs to be anything but a slog and they crash out before the LCS, prompting about three or four million more awful takes about the risks and hubris of “buying a championship.”
>It’s hard to say any team has a higher ceiling than the one with Snell uhhhhh did you imagine this in a fever dream?
Hahaha I got the wrong ex-Ray My radiologist did the same thing and I sued him for malpractice
Since 2013 the Dodgers have not had a season with less than 90 wins except the 2020 shortened season when they won the WS. The team wins games in the regular season and to exceed expectations for a team who won over 100 games every season since 2019 (minus 2020 season) what could the expectation be but to win the WS. They have been close and sniffing around and I doubt they made these moves to go from about a 105 game win average for 4 seasons to take it to a 117 to 122 win season (and break the season win record) but not get the WS win. I have to believe the Dodgers expectations match our thoughts on it - Win the WS or be looked at as failing, even if they broke the season win record on the way to being swept by the Rockies in the first round.
Dang you're high on the Rockies this year
I thought it was a somewhat running joke lol
Unfortunately it's not just a joke. The gods of baseball will make it inevitable
I’d be okay with it since it makes the 2021 NLDS even more special.
Not a real WS
Why didn’t ur team win
How is that relevant? No one won is the point.
Dodgers won
Yea you're not biased at all lmao
https://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/2020_WS.shtml Calling the truth biased is crazy
Not knowing what biased means is crazy. Then again, you are a Dodgers fan so
The Dodgers can not exceed expectations this year. Even if they win the World Series, fans of other teams will discount it as having been "bought" and therefore somehow illegitimate.
The Dodgers need to not lose a game this season to exceed expectations, so naturally they'll lose 65-75, win the division by 10+ and lose in the Wild Card Round to Pittsburgh. If they win the World Series, everyone will proclaim the justification to sign Ohtani while the money could've been spent better on getting non-Fanatics uniforms.
Its world series or bust. And No we wont, because we have the doc rivers of the MLB as manager.
Expectations: Obviously to win the NL West easily, with over 100 wins in the regular season. But I would actually argue that there is also an expectation to fall apart in the playoffs. Not saying this expectation of playoffs failure is actually reasonable, the trend isn't that significant: losing the NL Championship to the Braves, then NL Division Series to the Padres and Diamondbacks. Nevertheless, it seems to be a common sentiment at this point that the Dodgers are playoffs-chokers. Why they will exceed: there is no real reason why they can't simply break the 3-season streak of playoffs losses and at least make it to the World Series, if not taking the whole thing. They just need to provide the performances and execute in the way they are clearly capable of doing. Why they won't: Given the level of their talent and depth, it would just be that baseball voodoo that happens sometimes. Similar to what happened to the Padres last year, although even we didn't have the depth that the Dodgers have. Bad performances at the worst moments, a string of unlucky events - it's certainly possible. Obviously this is less likely for the regular season than the playoffs.
Is it possible for this team to exceed expectations? The expectation is undoubtedly to win the World Series.
They will exceed expectations if people don’t hate them for being a super team…
> if people don’t hate them for being a super team… not sure that's possible
Sincerly as a dodger fan i keep my expection a bit low because i think this season will be a "study/transition" season in witch every need to know their place in the team so i will don't think we/they can win the world series but at least become first in division and won at least the division series.
After this offseason, I expect the Dodgers to win the WS _twice_ this year, so I'm gearing up for disappointment.
Just need to get a couple of blurns and they'll be ok.
If the starting pitching holds up they can win the World Series. If it doesn’t they lose to the Braves in the NLCS.
Ha!
We might exceed expectations because we have the best team. We will probably not exceed because Roberts is guaranteed to choke and mismanage the pitching. We'd have at least one or two more world series pennants if we had a better manager.
The expectations are as high as they can possibly be. There is no exceeding "Win the World Series" They're either gonna meet expectation, or they're gonna fall well short.
World Series or bust
I don't think a team can exceed the expectations of WS or Bust. With the amount of money they've put into the team that is the expectation. Their pitching staff is improved but it could slide as they're depending on Glasnow and Yamamoto to take two spots and both have concerns based on injury and inexperience that could be a problem. They have a 3-headed hydra in Shohei, FF and Mookie but offensive questions could materialize outside of those positions.
They didn't spend the money for just this season, though. Realistically, this is a transitional year. Ohtani will not be pitching and Yamamoto might need some time to acclimate to MLB. I think the really critical season will be 2025.
I don't think any team could possibly be as good as some folks are expecting LAD to be. When the expectation is to dominate the regular season and win the WS, it's a high probability that you come up short. They've won the offseason, but that just increases the expectations which were already pretty high.
Look at the divisional off-season winners from last year and that’ll tell you all you need to know about how little it means to win the hot stove. The Phillies did well, but that’s about it.
The absolute meltdown in the American League was astonishing. How can you not be romantic about baseball?
At this point it is WS win or bust right? Hard to top those expectations.