The Los Angeles Dodgers currently stand at 93 wins and 69 losses, a winning percentage of exactly .574. Not bad, not great from reigning World Champions.
But with the final month of the season approaching its conclusion, baseball is looking a little different.
The game remains the same: a batter at home readying his swing, men on base, ready to run at a moment’s notice, a pitcher on the mound, his aim tempting him, home runs electrifying the crowd, and naturally plenty to eat. The sunset gives fans picturesque backdrops, and though the weather hasn’t changed just yet, there’s a chill running through the air.
The lights are shining just a bit brighter than usual; every pitch, every swing, every minute gets heavier and heavier. The homestands, which will soon come to an end, are electric, knowing each game in Chavez Ravine could spell the season’s future. To those in the know, October looms large, especially to LA’s boys of Summer.
The Dodgers currently hold the third seed in the National League, behind only the Milwaukee Brewers and the Philadelphia Phillies, a far cry from the expectations the Dodgers had going into the season. The Dodgers, as a team, were declared to be ruining baseball and challenging the win record with massive offseason moves. However, with their current record, the postseason was less of a concern for entry and more of an inevitability. Still, there’s teeth-clenching, edge-riding competition ahead.
Approaching the Postseason, there have been flickers as to what this team could really be throughout the regular season. But there have been shortcomings, namely, injuries.
Injuries and Inconsistency - a shadow unbeaten
Some may recall previous predictions made in early spring that injuries would be the make-or-break factor for this team. Unfortunately, we were proven right.
Almost immediately at the beginning of the season, the initial injuries in the starting rotation began to pile up, and later started to affect the everyday starting players. As the season has continued, the injury bug has moved deeper into the bullpen.
Fans believed this year’s trade deadline would prove to be a reinforcement, though only two were made.
One of those trades, Brock Steward, has already been sent to the injured list, facing an issue with his throwing arm. And every day player Alex Call from the Washington Nationals isn’t playing up to his scouting report, which led to his arrival in LA.
Though one could be justified in questioning the front office’s decision-making, the real issue lies in the aforementioned injury bug, which plagued the team throughout the 2025 season.
Let’s lay out the initial injuries with the starting rotation.
Almost as soon as the season began, injuries to Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow struck in the first month of March, into April. This led to the starting rotation being replaced by rookie or relief pitchers and increased use of the bullpen, which saw limited success.
The rotation’s saving grace? The return of Shohei Ohtani as a pitcher. He began his pitching career with the Dodgers, increasing his innings every start and consistently pitching some of his best pitches at high velocity, with his fastball sitting comfortably at 102 MPH.
Ohtani’s return to the starting pitching rotation allowed the starting rotation to rest and gave time for the pitching staff to recalibrate. Starting pitchers Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow were two of the first to suffer injuries and have returned to overall success.
This now makes the current starting rotation a six-man roster consisting of Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani, Emmet Sheean, Clayton Kershaw, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. At first, a six-man rotation was considered a luxury by Opening Day; however, it has now only proved to be the reinforcements of an exhausted team.
Then there’s the everyday lineup. In general, the team’s offense and defensive capabilities have continued to prove inconsistent. Outfielders Teoscar Hernandez and Michael Conforto continue to struggle in their positions. Offensive titans Andy Pages and Will Smith have experienced regression despite periods of dominance, including Will Smith suffering a hand fracture that landed him on the injured list.
On top of all of that, the “Big Three” of Shohei Ohtani, Freddy Freeman, and Mookie Betts just can’t seem to put it together. When two get hot, one goes cold. Their offense, which at times feels unstoppable when firing on all cylinders, just seems unable to line up at the right time.
Good news: If it all comes together, the Dodgers are the team to beat. And despite significant adversity to his health and severe doubts surrounding his ability, Dodgers Superstar Mookie Betts has found his swing once again and continues to work his hardest to meet the end-of-season demands, both in the batter’s box and at his new position of shortstop. He has been batting .322 and in his last 30 games displayed his superstar talent once again, and not a moment too soon.
Bad news: The main discussion centers on the bullpen, as it remains in effective limbo. Healthy pitchers, such as Egdardo Enriquez, continue to prove themselves to be deadly on the pitcher’s mound. Returned from injuries, pitchers such as Tanner Scott and Will Klein are doing their best to hold the line.
The bullpen still cannot get it done. Several winnable games have been given to Dodger opponents by the Bullpen, including seven losses attributed solely to relief pitcher Blake Trinen and over 10 saves blown by Tanner Scott. It remains to be seen whether or not the bullpen will hold up.
September setbacks
Ending the month of August, the Dodgers had a record of 78-59, and narrowly avoided a sweep by the Arizona Diamondbacks thanks to a walk-off home run by catcher Will Smith. Despite the bang to end the month, the series still wasn’t a pretty sight or end to an overall good month.
This graceful end to August then brought the team to their final East Coast road trip. The Dodgers faced off against the Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles, both teams without hopes for a postseason appearance, but still evidently threats to the team. The Dodgers have a losing record against teams under a winning percentage of .500, which struck again.
The Pirates swept the Dodgers in three miserable games. This brought the team to one of the worst sets of games this season. The Dodgers entered Baltimore intending to recover, and while they weren’t swept, the Dodgers left Baltimore with one of the worst losses due to a historic bid by Dodger pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
On Sept. 6, Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched his bid for a no-hitter, which ended at the bottom of the 9th, thanks to a solo homerun by Baltimore’s Jackson Holiday.
In itself, this wasn’t significant beyond the disappointment at the loss of what would have been Yamamoto’s first no-hitter. The Dodgers led the game by two with the score in the bottom of the ninth standing 3-1. But as manager Dave Roberts took Yamamoto out of the game and went to the bullpen, that bullpen couldn’t finish the game. Relief pitcher Blake Trinen faced immediate opposition, walking the bases loaded, and was unable to find his command, which left the second relief pitcher, Tanner Scott, wide open to a bad pitch to center field, ending the game in a loss.
For many, it was one of the most heartbreaking losses, highlighting all the errors that had plagued the Dodgers for months. It wasn’t a great start to September, to put it mildly.
The Dodgers returned home and swept the Rockies in a three-game series, and brought in the second-seeded Philadelphia Phillies. This was the real taste of the postseason the Dodgers were expecting. While the Phillies were held at bay, it was the Dodger bullpen that effectively collapsed on multiple occasions, which can only be described as a catastrophic implosion.
And the bullpen woes of the night didn’t end there, as not even a 465-foot blast of a home run from Shohei Ohtani couldn’t secure the win for the Dodgers. As relief pitcher Blake Trienen gave up another home run in the top of the ninth inning to put the Phillies on top with a final score of 9-6.
The Dodgers lost the series, losing two games to Philadelphia. Philadelphia proved to be a difficult opponent, but the starting rotation proved it was ready for competition. A promising sign for the postseason, as the northern rival, the San Francisco Giants, were next.
The four-game series against San Francisco ended in a series victory for the Dodgers, as they won three out of four games against San Francisco, securing the Dodgers’ postseason berth and effectively eliminating their longtime rival from the postseason. As well as evening the all-time score between the teams at exactly 1288 wins and losses for both teams, dating back to their time in New York as borough-based teams.
October Bound - The Ravine Rises
As it stands, the Dodgers are in the Wild Card round and are going to have to win 13 games to win it all again in October. Even now, having clinched the NL West, they appear to be gaining momentum and staying hungry as they head into the playoffs, with another reason to win it all, not just history, but for a legend.
As of Sept. 18, 11-time Dodger All-Star Clayton Kershaw announced his intention to retire at the end of the 2025 season as a Dodger.
Kershaw played his final regular-season start against the San Francisco Giants during the last homestand for the Dodgers in the 2025 season, cementing his legacy as the pitcher with the most strikeouts against the San Francisco Giants and as a Dodger legend and a baseball legend. Many thought a retirement tour was in the cards for the legend and team leader, but with his announced intent to retire, this year becomes the year to send off Kershaw right, with another world championship.
Los Angeles’ baseball juggernaut appears bruised, beaten, having fought through a brutal summer all around. Yet the goal remains the same: go back-to-back. They have everything they could possibly need to be the team to beat; they clinched the National League West in thunderous fashion, eliminating the Diamondbacks and sweeping the Mariners, and head into the Wild Card Series to face the Cincinnati Reds in a best-of-three series, but something just still feels missing. A personal recommendation?
Consult another legend, just as Kershaw is a Dodger legend, look for the Lakers’ own Kobe Bryant, the last man to bring back-to-back championships to LA in 2009 and 2010.
He’d say to find that mamba mentality, it’s all a game at a time. With that in mind, the Dodgers have the chance to make history and bring back-to-back World Series championships to LA. It would be the first time since the Yankees’ dynasty of the early 2000s that a defending champion had gone back-to-back.
The Wild Card Series, ALDS, and NLDS begin in early October, leading into the ALCS and NLCS in mid-October, and ultimately to the Fall Classic World Series. Catch the action on Fox, ESPN, or MLB.Watch TV, and cheer on your Los Angeles Dodgers.