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The mandate was set the moment the dancing Dodgers flooded the Yankee Stadium field on that glorious, gutsy October night.
One is not enough.
The bar was set the minute the Dodgers squeezed past the San Diego Padres then steamrolled all of New York to dominate baseball with their best team ever.
One is not enough.
Their mission was clear the instant those giant buses whizzed past adoring thousands on downtown streets and emptied a group of tearful hugging players into a roaring Dodger Stadium for their first-ever November celebration.
Mookie Betts, who did not play in Japan because of illness, was slated to play against the Angels on Sunday before being scratched from the lineup.
One is damn sure not enough.
One full-season World Series championship is just not enough.
Not for these kinds of players. Not for these heaps of money. Not for these sorts of fans.
It might not seem fair, and it’s certainly not much fun, but this Dodger dynasty cannot be considered a real dynasty unless they win it all again this season, becoming the first team in 25 years to capture consecutive titles.
It’s not very dramatic, it’s six months of grinding aimed at one month of glory, but there is no escaping it.
For the 2025 Dodgers, it’s a World Series championship or bust.
Last season’s title didn’t lift the pressure, it doubled it. If they really want to fully destroy the ghosts of postseason failures past, they simply have to make it two in a row.
“I do know that we’re trying to do something that hasn’t been done in 25 years, to go back-to-back, that’s certainly in our calculus,” Manager Dave Roberts told reporters this spring, later adding, “It’s a motivator.”
It’s more than a motivator, it’s a must.
In most cities a championship buys a team at least one season of relaxed grace, but not with this team. In most cases a franchise can live with losing for two or three seasons after a title, but these Dodgers are different.
These Dodgers have won 11 division titles in 12 seasons. These Dodgers have a payroll of almost $402 million, some $75 million more than anyone else. These Dodgers should not just win. They should win, and win, and win.
Los Angeles knows dynasties and so far, this ain’t it.
These Dodgers are not yet in a class with Wooden’s Bruins, Pete’s Trojans, Showtime or the Kobe-Shaq Lakers. All were brash, dominant programs that won at least two consecutive championships while the rest of the world was at their necks.
Roki Sasaki flashed an elite mix of pitches, but also walked five batters, as the Dodgers completed a two-game sweep of the Cubs in the season-opening Tokyo Series.
The Dodgers haven’t done that yet. They haven’t become that yet. Considering the 2020 shortened-season title is discounted and last year’s title was their first full-season crown in 36 years, they need to add on.
And they know it. Roberts said he didn’t use the exact word “dynasty” in his annual speech on the first day of spring training, but he didn’t dance around it either.
“I do think that we’re the epicenter of baseball,” he said. “I do think that we do a lot of things well, we have a lot of talented players. Our fans come out in droves. Our players understand that, like I said, there’s a standard to uphold, and how we perform each day is important.”
The last baseball team to win consecutive titles was the three-peat New York Yankees from 1998-2000, and while they were memorable, these Dodgers can be better.
They can win it again. They should win it again. From ownership to the depths of the bullpen, they’ve done everything to put themselves in a position to win it again.
They ended the season as the best team in baseball by a fairly large margin, and guess what? With Mark Walter’s money and Andrew Friedman’s smarts, they got substantially better.
They signed the best veteran pitcher on the market in Blake Snell. They signed the best young arm in Roki Sasaki. They re-signed all of their free agent postseason heroes, from Teoscar Hernández to Blake Treinen to Kiké Hernández. They added veteran reliever Kirby Yates and outfielder Michael Conforto.
Then they capped it all off with a stunning signing of one of the best relievers in baseball, Shohei Ohtani’s nemesis Tanner Scott, in a move that even surprised Roberts.
He thought they were finished buying. He was satisfied that they had greatly improved on greatness. And then…
“I just felt that we were tapped out…And we checked three boxes at that point in time, big boxes, so that would have been, like, good enough,” Roberts said. “So when I heard that Tanner Scott can still be in play, I was very surprised. And then when we acquired him, I was like, ‘I can’t believe that just happened.’ Because it would have still been a great offseason. A great offseason.”
It was indeed a great offseason, filled with several “I can’t believe that just happened” moments, manufactured by a front office that swings big and takes the extra base and works as hard as their hustling players.
“And I just think it speaks to ownership, and Andrew and the front office, how competitive they are, as our players are,” Roberts said. “And I just love the way they can put back into the players.”
Oh, the players. My, but they have the players.
This is not just the best and deepest roster in baseball. It might be one of the best and deepest rosters in baseball history. They’re so loaded, they swept the Chicago Cubs in a two-game season-opening series in Tokyo without Mookie Betts or Freddie Freeman and without arguably their top two starting pitchers, Snell and Tyler Glasnow. They also used a different set of relievers each night.
This week wasn’t about the defending World Series champions visiting Japan, or Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s transformation, or even Roki Sasaki’s major league debut.
Could they go 162-0? Only half joking.
Start, of course, with Ohtani, who could be the most complete player in baseball history. Next up, former MVP Betts. Then, regular season and World Series MVP Freeman. Follow with two 30-home run guys in Teoscar Hernández and Max Muncy, then two-time All-Star Will Smith, then NLCS MVP Tommy Edman, then former 30-home run guy Conforto.
The starting rotation is so deep that Ohtani isn’t being rushed to the mound after Tommy John surgery and might only make a dozen starts this year. And the two-time former Cy Young winner Snell is only the No. 2 starter, behind Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Then there’s the bullpen is so rich that last year’s World Series hero Treinen won’t even be the primary closer.
All this, and Roberts just cemented the credibility of his clubhouse culture with a contract extension that makes him the highest paid in baseball by annual salary.
Seriously, who is going to beat them? They could win a major-league record 120 games if they didn’t stress load management and spend the regular season gearing up for October. That’s what this summer is going to be, one long pregame stretch in preparation for the playoffs. They might “only” win 95 games, but you can bet they’ll be ready for that first round.
Or… not.
What if they suffer a World Series hangover? Remember the Rams’ Super Bowl hangover? What if that happens here?
Roberts says it won’t.
“I just think that we’re as good as anyone in baseball at putting the blinders on and getting better each day, with respect to expectations,” Roberts said. “And I think that managing high expectations that we have every year, I think our guys do a really good job of doing that, which as a byproduct guards against any type of letdown.”
But what if…
What if Ohtani gets distracted in his return to pitching and declines offensively? What if Betts wears down during his first full season at shortstop? What if Freeman suffers an understandable letdown after one of the greatest homers in Dodger history?
Teoscar Hernández earned his biggest guaranteed contract, and what if that robs him of his fire? Muncy struggled with injuries most of last season, what if his body will never be right?
What if Sasaki pitches like an unfocused kid and Snell loses his edge and relievers Scott and Yates crumble under the new pressure?
Tokyo shows its support as the Dodgers arrive in Tokyo to open their 2025 season against the Cubs.
Lots can go wrong, but here’s guessing it won’t. And the Dodgers are so deep, all of that would have to happen at once for them to struggle.
No, this season is not about histrionics, it’s about history. The Dodgers will make it. The Dodgers will cement it.
The Dodgers will win a second consecutive World Series to become one of baseball’s most dominant and Los Angeles’ most beloved dynasties.
At least, that’s the plan.
