The 2025 Los Angeles Dodgers are certainly one of the most talented teams ever assembled. Their roster features the reigning National League MVP in Shohei Ohtani; three other former MVP winners in Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Clayton Kershaw; a three-time winner of the Japanese version of the Cy Young Award in Yoshinobu Yamamoto; eight players who were All-Stars in 2024 (Ohtani, Betts, Freeman, Teoscar Hernandez, Will Smith, Tyler Glasnow, Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates); a two-time Cy Young winner in Blake Snell; and perhaps the most electrifying new talent for 2025 in Roki Sasaki.
Indeed, the Dodgers' splurge this winter, following last offseason's signings of Ohtani and Yamamoto, has created "a stress test for the game itself," as ESPN's Jeff Passan wrote in January. Feeling that stress most acutely are fans of bad teams, who might look at the Dodgers and see a broken sport -- or, perhaps, the failings of their own organizations.
This incredible talent disparity between the Dodgers and the bottom of the league begs the question: How many bad teams would it take to beat the Dodgers? Sounds like a fun exercise -- let's find out!
Using the projected WAR and playing time used for the depth charts at FanGraphs, we built two 30-man rosters: One for the Dodgers and then one for the worst teams. We started with the projected worst team in MLB and kept adding teams until we constructed a roster that could beat the Dodgers. Here's how it played out.
Dodgers vs. Chicago White Sox
Let's start with the White Sox, last season's losers of a record 121 games. FanGraphs projects them to be much improved: 22 games better in fact, all the way to a 63-win team, although that is still the lowest forecast for any team. FanGraphs projects the Dodgers to be ... wait ... worse than 2024?
Yep, after winning 98 games in 2024 despite numerous injuries to the pitching staff, and despite adding Snell and Sasaki and getting Ohtani back on the mound, FanGraphs projects the Dodgers to have only 96 wins. Keep that in mind as we build out the challengers' roster. We're not comparing them to some all-time great super team but merely to a 96-win team.
The Dodgers, of course, have exceeded 96 wins every full season since 2019, topping out at 111 in 2022 and reaching 106 wins in 2019 and 2021. But perhaps 96 is the right projection: Ohtani probably won't go 50/50 again as a hitter; Betts and Freeman are a year older; and Hernandez is unlikely to be as good. Still, I'll take the over -- and other projections are similarly more optimistic on the Dodgers: ESPN's Brad Doolittle has them as a 102-win team; Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA system predicts 103 wins; the over/under in Vegas is 103.5 wins.
But for this exercise, we're sticking with FanGraphs. We won't bother to run the entire rosters here, but after the first round, the cumulative WAR for our 30-man rosters (14 position players, 16 pitchers) looks like this:
Dodgers: 54.8 WAR
White Sox: 21.2 WAR
Dodgers lead by 33.6 wins
Dodgers vs. White Sox/Rockies/Marlins
Let's add the Colorado Rockies and Miami Marlins to the mix -- the consensus next-worst teams in the majors. PECOTA actually views the Rockies as the worst team, clocking in at a mile-high 107 losses. FanGraphs sees them at 65-97 and is surprisingly optimistic on the Marlins, projecting a 72-90 record. I don't know; the Marlins might have the most nondescript roster of position players I've ever seen, although maybe the pitching won't be as bad as last season. Of course, Sandy Alcantara will be a hot trade commodity -- he's looked strong in spring training in his return from Tommy John surgery -- and is unlikely to last the season in Miami, but for now he's a Marlin, so a Marlin he shall remain.
The best new addition here is Alcantara at 3.5 WAR, while shortstops Ezequiel Tovar (3.2 WAR) of the Rockies and Xavier Edwards (3.0 WAR) of the Marlins also project as above-average regulars. We'll have to bump Edwards to a utility role off the bench, however. We'll also keep Rockies center fielder Brenton Doyle (2.9 WAR) in the outfield even though we have Chicago's Luis Robert Jr. (3.0 WAR) patrolling center.
The Marlins provide some bullpen depth while Rockies starters German Marquez, Ryan Feltner and Kyle Freeland help the rotation. Colorado's Nolan Jones will thankfully replace Joey Gallo at DH for a one-win upgrade while Ryan McMahon improves the roster at third base. Overall, only seven White Sox players remain on the 30-man roster as we've doubled the collective WAR:
Dodgers: 54.8 WAR
White Sox/Marlins/Rockies: 42.4 WAR
Dodgers lead by 12.4 wins
Dodgers vs. White Sox/Marlins/Rockies/Nationals
The Washington Nationals are the fourth-worst team for FanGraphs at 73-89. They have some exciting but unproven young players, like outfielders James Wood and Dylan Crews. Wood (2.8 WAR) bumps the Marlins' Jesus Sanchez as one of the starting outfielders while catcher Keibert Ruiz, first baseman Nathaniel Lowe and second baseman Luis Garcia Jr. also assume starting positions. Garcia has the highest projected WAR of that trio at 2.5, so these aren't huge upgrades. We're still very much lacking anybody with the star power to match the top players on the Dodgers.
Crews makes the team as a backup and CJ Abrams (2.9 WAR), while unable to supplant Tovar at shortstop, does add to the bench strength. MacKenzie Gore and his 2.6 WAR is now the No. 2 starter behind Alcantara while Mitchell Parker joins the rotation as well. Throw in a couple new relievers and Robert is now the only White Sox player still on the roster. We've added an additional seven wins:
Dodgers: 54.8 WAR
White Sox/Marlins/Rockies/Nationals: 49.7 WAR
Dodgers lead by 5.1 wins
Dodgers vs. White Sox/Marlins/Rockies/Nationals/Angels
Ahh, Anaheim: Home of Disneyland, real housewives and the longest playoff drought in the majors. The Los Angeles Angels add nine new players to our roster, including new starting shortstop Zach Neto, who comes in at 3.6 WAR. If that feels high, Baseball-Reference registered Neto at 5.1 WAR in 2024 as he posted maybe the most under-the-radar excellent season in the majors. He'll miss the start of the season after offseason shoulder surgery but FanGraphs still projects 560 plate appearances and solid two-way production.
And, hey, remember Mike Trout? Impossible to predict how many games he'll play, but the forecast is 500 plate appearances and 3.6 WAR. Other Angels added to the roster include catchers Logan O'Hoppe and Travis d'Arnaud, starting pitchers Yusei Kikuchi and Jose Soriano, and relievers Ben Joyce, Kenley Jansen and Brock Burke.
We're getting close to the Dodgers now, but one adjustment is necessary. The bench players on the roster were getting credit for full-time action, which isn't exactly right. We have Neto, Tovar, Edwards and Abrams all on the roster, but all can't be full-time players. For the guys on the bench and for the sixth and seventh starting pitchers, we're going to cut their projected WAR in half (which is still an overall generous allotment of playing time). This still leaves the Dodgers ahead:
Dodgers: 54.8 WAR
White Sox/Marlins/Rockies/Nationals/Angels: 50.1 WAR
Dodgers lead by 4.7 wins
Dodgers vs. White Sox/Marlins/Rockies/Nationals/Angels/A's
Next up: The don't call us the West Sacramento Athletics. Can the A's help us chase down the mighty Dodgers?
Yes, they can. Shea Langeliers, coming off a 29-homer season, is the new starting catcher. Zack Gelof struggled at the plate in 2024, hitting .211 and leading the AL with 188 strikeouts, but his projections are positive, and he takes over at second base. Lawrence Butler is now added to the outfield -- a good call based on his outstanding second half when a swing adjustment led to a .300/.345/.553 slashline for his final 61 games. Brent Rooker provides a significant upgrade at DH. But at this point, we still haven't caught the Dodgers.
Then ... we add Jeffrey Springs to the rotation and Jose Leclerc to the bullpen. Getting close. Finally: All-Star closer Mason Miller is the last piece needed with his big projection (for a reliever) of 2.0 WAR. It took six teams to match the Dodgers:
Dodgers: 54.8 WAR
White Sox/Marlins/Rockies/Nationals/Angels/Athletics: 55.0 WAR
Standings: Essentially even
Here's what the 30-man rosters look like (the Dodgers get an extra relief pitcher due to Ohtani's two-way role):
Are you buying that these teams are equal? Remember, we've given a generous allotment of playing time to the bench players from the bad teams. What's also interesting is that the WAR projections leave the pitching staffs almost even -- 21.8 WAR for the Dodgers compared to 21.0 for the Others. Call me a little skeptical there. In fact, the Others lead in bullpen WAR, 6.3 to 4.7, even though the Dodgers added two of the best relievers in 2024 in Scott and Yates to a pen that already ranked fourth in the majors in ERA last season.
As an aside, I added up the bWAR for the 30-man rosters from 2024 (using the projected 2025 numbers for players who were injured or played elsewhere), and the Dodgers only held a slight lead, 61.9 WAR to 59.5, so both groups are projected to regress from their 2024 performance.
If you still believe the Dodgers are a little better, we need to add a seventh team to get the bad teams ahead. In that case, it would be the Pittsburgh Pirates, and adding Paul Skenes and his projected 4.8 WAR -- after posting 5.9 WAR in 23 starts as a rookie -- feels like a decisive addition.
That's assuming the Dodgers are a 96-win team and not, say, something much greater -- like the 2022 Dodgers.
To finish off this exercise, it would be fun to see how a real-life example played out. Let's turn back to that Dodgers team that won 111 games (before a first-round exit to the San Diego Padres in the playoffs).
The Dodgers' 30-man roster from 2022 produced 61.9. It took the bottom five teams -- the Nationals (55-107), A's (60-102), Pirates (60-102), Cincinnati Reds (62-100) and Kansas City Royals (65-97) to get to 64.6 WAR. That's what happens in real life: Enough players will exceed their projections to produce enough quality players to match the league's best team, although that bottom group still produced only two 4-win players in Ke'Bryan Hayes (4.5) and Brady Singer (4.5) with Juan Soto accumulating 3.7 WAR before his trade to the Padres.
We'll see how this plays out. I look at the White Sox, Marlins and Rockies and don't see much star power -- or even players who might surprise. So I'll stick with the study: The Dodgers are as good as the bottom six teams combined.