The Los Angeles Dodgers’ attempt to win a third straight World Series officially ended Thursday, swept by the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series.
But their chances were no longer the same from June onwards.
The Dodgers began June 11 the same way they began the season — as heavy favorites to become the first franchise since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees to win three consecutive championships. Their active roster, the most expensive in sports, included two former World Series MVPs, a Cy Young winner, and a second would be added a few weeks later at the trade deadline.
The linchpin was superstar Shohei Ohtani, a four-time MVP whose pitching and hitting exploits were unprecedented in modern baseball history, and who had helped the club win titles in each of his first two seasons in Los Angeles.
This version of Ohtani was exhibited on June 11 in Pittsburgh. He began the day with a minuscule 1.06 ERA in 11 appearances on the mound. Against the Pirates, he hit a solo home run and was on base in all four plate appearances. Then, in the seventh inning, Ohtani went out with what the team called knee inflammation.
The injury seemed harmless. Rather, it was the first in a series of nagging knee and biceps injuries that diminished Ohtani and ultimately derailed the Dodgers’ juggernaut (total salary cost: $339 million) until they could no longer keep up with Milwaukee ($146 million), which completed its sweep with Thursday’s 6-4 victory in Los Angeles.
After leaving the June 11 game in Pittsburgh, Ohtani pitched only three more times and had a 4.50 ERA before being shut down as a pitcher on July 3.
The Dodgers’ postseason disappointment can’t be explained solely by Ohtani’s decline during the second half of the season. The Dodgers’ vaunted bullpen and starters also showed vulnerabilities throughout the summer.
Yet when the rest of the team’s offense faltered for long stretches, Ohtani’s inability to save his team at the plate was even more pronounced. The Dodgers hit .257 during the regular season and just .188 in the postseason. Their OPS, a measure of both on-base and slugging percentage, ranked second on the season (.762). In the playoffs, that average dropped to .572.
“They just outplayed us, they outplayed us, they played better defense, they didn’t make any mistakes,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told Fox after Game 4.
Ohtani produced just one RBI in his final 83 plate appearances of the regular season, a stretch that included 11 hits and 11 walks. Entering Thursday’s NLCS finale, Ohtani had reached base eight times in 28 postseason plate appearances, with his slugging percentage a fraction of his career postseason average.
Desperate for a spark, the Dodgers moved Ohtani back to his traditional leadoff spot for Game 4 and he responded by hitting his first home run since August 18 and driving in three runs. Ohtani swung his bat and raised his arms in celebration as the Dodgers took a 4-0 lead in the second inning. But as had been the case all season, the Dodgers kept pace with Ohtani. He never came on base again and the Dodgers never scored again on Thursday, allowing Milwaukee to recover and rally.
The Dodgers aren’t the only ones in baseball entering this offseason facing uncertainty. A work stoppage is considered likely when the collective bargaining agreement between MLB and its players union expires on December 1. The league intends to close the wide financial gap between its biggest spenders and most thrifty clubs, despite the success of small-market teams in these postseasons. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said the league wanted to address “concerns that are at the heart of our mission, which is competitive balance.”
Backed by MLB’s richest TV deal, the Dodgers’ finances could allow them to build star-studded rosters that allow them to weather injuries and slumps by plugging in one promising player after another. This spending fueled their titles in 2020, 2024 and 2025 and should ensure they remain competitive for as long as owner Mark Walter intends to spend lavishly on the roster. Walter sold the Los Angeles Lakers and his stake in Premier League club Chelsea to generate cash while federal investigators probe his businesses, but Dodgers executives have maintained that Walter viewed the baseball club as the crown jewel of his portfolio of sports assets.
“I can’t tell you how important the Dodgers are to Mark,” Dodgers executive Stan Kasten told reporters in August.
Playing both ways is important to Ohtani. Still, if there is baseball in 2027, Ohtani will be 33 years old, and the combination of this season’s lingering injuries — to his knee, then to his right bicep — and how the team handles them will highlight the team’s willingness to commit to using Ohtani as both a pitcher and a hitter in future seasons.
Rather than removing Ohtani from the lineup for an extended period of time until he was physically ready, the team deferred to the star’s feelings regarding his health, removing him from the lineup for only a game or two in June, July and August. As recently as Game 3 of the NLCS this week, Roberts told reporters that he had a “big conversation” with Ohtani and team executives in which Ohtani expressed his belief that he was on the verge of emerging from a prodigious slump.
“He’s just convinced he’s onto something,” Roberts told reporters this week. “He feels like he can help us, and he can help us. To me, that’s all I need to hear.”
Allowing a player’s contribution to influence his usage isn’t uncommon, but it forced the Dodgers to rely on Ohtani’s directness. Although his health issues began to surface in early June, it took until early September for the team to place Ohtani on the 15-day IL.
“He’s not always the best journalist at expressing how he feels,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said in late September. “Freddie (Freeman) is the same way, Clayton Kershaw, I’ve been around a lot of those guys who feel like their job is to be there to help the team as much as they can and sometimes they downplay certain things that bother them.”
Before the Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs, Ohtani told reporters it had been difficult to fully understand the root cause of it all. Before facing Milwaukee, Ohtani began practicing batting outside, a rarity for a player who prefers to prepare inside the batting cages beneath the stadium.
“With swinging, it’s a daily process of trying different things,” Ohtani said last week. “Symptoms shouldn’t be the reason I can’t punch.”
During last year’s World Series, Ohtani also had setbacks, but his teammates made up for it with timely contributions to win a second straight title. This was no longer the case this year. Of the 12 teams that reached the postseason, the Dodgers ranked 10th in OPS, a measure of both on-base and slugging percentage, while their pitchers ranked eighth in walks and hits allowed per nine innings.
After beating Atlanta to advance to the NLCS, the Dodgers wore celebratory T-shirts emblazoned with “Take October.” Unfortunately for them, their chance to win a third straight World Series might as well have been taken away months earlier.
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