The Dynastic Los Angeles Dodgers
"We just kept going."
The Dodgers remain the model for a major league baseball team, and earlier this week cemented that with their second World Series championship in the last five years—and did it against the most dynastic organization in baseball.
On last week’s Future Projection podcast Ben Badler and I talked about whether or not this iteration of the Dodgers was in fact a dynasty. There’s only been more of that talk this week, and I’d highlight Ben Lindbergh’s piece for The Ringer and Travis Sawchik’s piece for The Score if you want to dig into the topic more.
There’s no quantifiable, objective way to measure whether or not a team is a dynasty.1 For me, it’s one of those things where you know it when you see it. The lines on either side of what is and what isn’t a dynasty can be blurred or debated.
This one’s a no-brainer for me.
I strongly believe the Dodgers from 2013 to now are a dynasty. I also think they’ve been the most consistently well-run organization in baseball for the last decade. I said as much on Twitter the night of the World Series and got some immediate—and lazy—pushback that “of course the Dodgers are well run, they are rich.”
Ownership and the willingness to spend money to try and be a competitive baseball team is not some separate entity of a baseball organization. Many people in the sport seem to have the idea that efficiency in spending is the name of the game or that teams deserve bonus points for winning in spite of a stingy owner. They view the owner as an obstacle to be overcome by a savvy front office instead of a key piece of the organization itself. I don’t find that argument at all compelling.
It seems pretty clear that simply having the ability to spend money doesn’t mean you’re going to be a well-run team. A huge point in the Dodgers favor is that they spend money and they spend it wisely. The only guaranteed money the Dodgers have on the books beyond the 2025 season are for the following players:
Shohei Ohtani (30 years old, signed through 2033)
Tyler Glasnow (31 years old, signed through 2027 with a team option for 2028)
Yoshinobu Yamamoto (25 years old, signed through 2035)
Mookie Betts (32 years old, signed through 2032)
Freddie Freeman (35 years old, signed through 2027)
Those signings all look pretty great to me.
But it’s not just the spending that makes the Dodgers a dynasty. They are consistently one of the best organizations in terms of scouting and player development and they do that without having picked earlier than 16th in the draft since the 2006.2
While winning more games in baseball than any other team from 2013-2024, the Dodgers have also had one of the best farm systems in baseball. Using our preseason org talent rankings at Baseball America, only two teams averaged a top-10 farm system from 2013-2024: The Rays and the Dodgers.
The Dodgers are the only team in baseball who have had a top-10 farm system in each of the last 10 seasons and are one of only four teams (along with the Rays, Orioles and Mariners) to average a top-10 farm system in each of the last five seasons.
They’ve hit on impact players like Corey Seager, Walker Beuhler, Will Smith and Gavin Lux in the back half of the first round.
Catcher/Outfielder/First baseman Dalton Rushing was a second-round pick in the 2022 draft and began looking like a steal almost immediately in pro ball. He now leads the farm system as a well-rounded upper-minors hitter who may or may not even have a spot on the big league team in 2025.
Outfielder Josue De Paula is a 19-year-old international signee who now looks like one of the most exciting young hitters in the lower minors.
The team flipped Michael Busch into a pair of high-upside prospects to backfill the system in lefthander Jackson Ferris and outfielder Zyhir Hope—both of whom are arguable top-100 types now, and the latter of whom has freakish bat speed, raw power and running ability and has wowed plenty of scouts in the Arizona Fall League.
The Dodgers consistently hit on players and also maximize the ability of the players they do have in a way that is and should be enviable to almost every other organization in the game.
While the 2024 iteration of the Dodgers was less home grown than previous (better) teams in recent years, they still had the prospect capital necessary to make trades for key additions like Jack Flaherty (Thayron Liranzo and Trey Sweeney), Tommy Edman and Michael Kopech (Miguel Vargas, Jerel Perez and Alexander Albertus) and Tyler Glasnow (Johnny DeLuca and Ryan Pepiot). The farm system remains impressively deep.
That’s hard to do even if you’re picking at the top of the draft consistently (or even intermittently) and the Dodgers have done so while picking behind everyone else in the draft because of consistent major league dominance.
They’ve made the postseason in 12 consecutive years. They’ve won their division in 11 of those 12 years. Since 2013 they have won 1,129 games. That’s more than anyone other team in baseball and 95 more than the second-place Yankees. They lead all teams with a 110 wRC+, a .330 wOBA, a .332 OBP, a .433 SLG and with 355.7 fWAR for position players. They are first with a 3.42 ERA, a 3.67 FIP, a 24.3% strikeout rate, a 17% K-BB%, a .227 opponent batting average and with 239 fWAR for pitchers.
They’ve now won a pair of world series championships in that stretch which, despite consistent October choking narratives, is directly in line with their expected championships in that stretch.
That sure feels like a dynasty to me.
This week I had a bunch of writing and a few new podcasts go up on the site. I published our annual draft report card series, which takes a look at each team’s 2024 draft class now that we’ve had time for those classes to sink in and for some players to make their pro debuts.
There are always a few readers who wonder why there are no actual grades on a series of posts called “draft report cards.” We’ve simply continued a naming convention for the pieces that date back to BA founder Allan Simpson in the 1980s.
We understand it’s a fool’s errand to put actual grades down on a draft class this early. So we don’t. Instead, the pieces are more superlative-based and intend to illuminate a draft class a bit more after the fact.
Each draft report card has the following:
Best Pure Hitter
Best Power Hitter
Fastest Runner
Best Defensive Player
Best Fastball
Best Secondary Pitch
Best Pro Debut
Best Athlete
Most Intriguing Background
Closest To The Majors
Best Day Three Pick (Or NDFA)
It’s a fun series of pieces that are always educational for me and hopefully for fans of every team. There’s always a player or a handful of players who stand out in a surprising way, plus new pro data we have that adds even more insight into a player’s game.
On episode 101 of Future Projection, Ben Badler and I talked about the World Series and some 2025 high school recruiting buzz, and on the draft podcast with Peter Flaherty we started our podcast draft review series with some talk about the 2024 draft classes of the American League East teams.
Thanks for reading and hope you all have a great weekend!
That is, unless you’re Bill James who has a dynasty accounting system that adds up various accomplishments for teams and attempts to determine when and for how long a team counts as a dynasty. This system seems a bit too generous for me, and no I would not count the even-year Giants of the 2010s a dynasty.
The Dodgers had the No. 7 overall pick in the 2006 draft and took lefthander Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw serves as a great face of this Dodgers dynasty as definite Hall of Famer the only player who’s been with the team since their postseason streak began in 2013. 2006 is looking like a pretty great year for the Dodgers. From 2006 to now, the Dodgers have won more games than any other team, narrowly beating out the Yankees.