The Los Angeles Dodgers may be favored to win the World Series once again, but it won’t be easy for them. The Dodgers are predicted to have challenges from at least three other teams. The Braves, Phillies and Mets are considered the biggest threats to the Dodgers, per ESPN baseball insiders.
Atlanta, Philadelphia and New York are all considered to be playoff teams in 2025. That certainly makes sense for the Mets, who signed the jewel of free agency in Juan Soto. New York also made the NLCS last year before losing to the Dodgers.
The Braves are coming off a 2024 season that saw the team riddled with injuries. Atlanta still won 89 games, despite those problems. The Phillies, meanwhile, have reached three straight postseason appearances.
“The Phillies’ offense is menacing and their rotation looks deep, but they need to shore up the back end of their bullpen if they hope to compete in the Dodgers’ territory,” ESPN baseball writer Alden Gonzalez wrote.
Time will soon tell, as the Major League Baseball season officially begins on Thursday. The Dodgers are 2-0, however, after sweeping the Chicago Cubs in the Tokyo Series.
MLB teams will need some luck to upend the Dodgers this season
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The Dodgers spent an awful lot of money the past two years on some of the biggest names in the free agent market. Los Angeles has three of the hottest players in MLB from Japan, including phenom pitcher Roki Sasaki.
Sasaki joins Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani as some of the best players on the team’s roster. Los Angeles agreed to spend more than $1 billion on Yamamoto and Ohtani alone. That is simply a bucketful of cash that several other teams in MLB can’t afford.
“Major League Baseball is a quarter century removed from its last repeat champion, but the Dodgers might be more prepared to pull it off than anyone,” Gonzalez added for ESPN. “Their rotation was their only weakness in October, and they have since doubled down by adding (Blake) Snell and Sasaki (not to mention getting Tyler Glasnow and Yamamoto back healthy).”
Casual MLB fans may consider the Mets to be the greatest threat in the National League to Los Angeles. That’s because the team bulked up their offense this past offseason with Soto. The Mets were also able to hold on to Pete Alonso. That tandem should be able to help score runs for the team, but it’s uncertain if the pitching will be able to hold as well.
Time will tell how the race for the NL pennant plays out this year.
