Making the Case For 5 Teams That Can Dethrone the Playoff Dodgers and Save MLB

The last time Major League Baseball fans desperately needed saving from an evil empire, Luis Gonzalez and the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks delivered one of the most unforgettable knockout punches in postseason history.

Who, pray tell, has the best chance of saving us from a Los Angeles Dodgers three-peat that could drive even more of a wedge into the forthcoming labor negotiations?

From a purely financial perspective, the Cleveland Guardians and their $93M payroll trouncing the Dodgers in the World Series would be perfektenschlag . The $114M Tampa Bay Rays or $117M Chicago White Sox doing so would also be objectively incredible.

However, our ranking of the five teams best equipped to dethrone the Dodgers has nothing to do with payroll and everything to do with matchups.

What Are the Dodgers' Potentially Fatal Flaws?

Los Angeles won 100 regular season games, including 18 of its final 23.

That's more than the Dodgers won in either of the previous two regular seasons, and also their most scorching-hot September surge yet in this dynastic run.

However, they lost 62 times, finished with merely the second-best record this season and actually kind of stunk for about eight weeks before reigniting over Labor Day weekend.

For starters, neither Shohei Ohtani nor Freddie Freeman has looked right in a while.

The former's injuries and struggles have been documented ad nauseam, culminating in a .503 OPS over his final 18 games, last homering on August 18. The latter more quietly vanished, playing in nearly every game, but homering just once in his 277 plate appearances since July 4.

That left-handed duo has combined for 60 hits, 17 home runs and 40 RBI over the past two postseasons. Even though Mookie Betts and Kyle Tucker woke up in a massive way in September, the Dodgers are nowhere near as intimidating if Ohtani and Freeman continue to struggle.

Second, Blake Snell's health is questionable yet again.

Snell left his Sept. 16 start after one inning with a groin strain.

He did pitch four innings against the Giants 10 days later. He was pumping in his four-seamer faster in that start than he had been all season. But it has been one setback after another for Snell, who was such a huge part of their postseason run one year ago. He had been on fire in his six starts prior to the most recent injury.

It's preposterous that a team that already doesn't have Ohtani pitching and doesn't know what to expect from Snell still gets to roll with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tarik Skubal and Tyler Glasnow in its first three games. If Snell isn't his usual self, that's an opening for an opponent.

For the year, the Dodgers have a +201 run differential, which rates second-best in the majors.

Between the seventh and eighth innings, they're sitting at a +1.

Edwin Díaz appears to have turned a corner with five scoreless innings to close out the regular season, but can they possibly have any faith in him in October when he had a 17.65 ERA across his previous 11 appearances?

Tanner Scott has done fine in the closer role this season, but he has two blown saves and two other losses across his last 13 appearances. Outside of the two Chicago teams, he's arguably the least trustworthy closer in this postseason.

The Dodgers do have a whole bunch of "good enough" relievers. In fact, all nine Dodgers pitchers with at least 27 relief appearances this season have an ERA between 2.64 and 3.89. But once the starter reaches the end of his rope, there's not a single arm coming out of this bullpen that feels impenetrable.

Say this much for Atlanta: It had the Dodgers' number during the regular season, going 5-1 in the head-to-head series.

However, Milwaukee was 6-0 against the Dodgers during the 2025 regular season before LA swept the Brewers in the NLCS, so it's going to take more than that to make the argument here.

What's a bummer for #BravesCountry is that Chris Sale—who tossed a complete-game shutout against the Dodgers a month ago—is pitching on Tuesday against Philadelphia, which means he won't be available until Game 2 of the NLDS against Los Angeles. Even that will be on just four days' rest, which he hasn't done since early April. If there is a Game 5, it would presumably be up to Sale on four days' rest yet again.

Is Tyler Mahle—who has never pitched in the postseason, but who became Atlanta's clear No. 2 starter after the trade deadline—ready for the spotlight?

Most importantly, can the Braves' bats wake back up?

Potent offense spearheaded their early run to a 36-16 record, but Atlanta averaged just 3.7 runs while playing basically .500 baseball over the final eight weeks of the regular season.

We all know how streaky Matt Olson can be, though. It sure would be something if the guy Atlanta traded for to replace Freddie Freeman—who was so huge for the Braves in the 2021 NLCS against the Dodgers—caught fire and sent Freeman and Co. home early.

It would also be something if Atlanta pummeled Tarik Skubal whenever he starts in the NLDS. There was a lot of speculation leading up to the trade deadline that if he didn't end up with the Dodgers, he might go to the Braves. Maybe they can use that as motivation to rally the troops against him?

Should we get a rematch of the 2020 World Series, could the Rays flip the script and win their first-ever title?

While going up against Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, who combined to make four starts for them in that Fall Classic six years ago?

Those particular matchups would be wildly intriguing.

Glasnow has faced every other team in the majors at least twice in his career, but he has never once pitched against Tampa Bay. Meanwhile, Snell has faced the Rays three times in his career and has a worse ERA (6.00) against them than he does against any other team.

To be fair, if we're going to play that game, we should also note that Tarik Skubal has eviscerated the Rays with a 0.74 ERA over his five starts against them.

There's just something about that "They pitched for us last time!" dynamic—even though Junior Caminero was perhaps still learning how to drive at the time—that could spark a real fire.

Beyond that, the Rays have made the transition from "fun story" to "serious World Series threat" over the past two months.

Even with both Yandy Díaz and Jonathan Aranda—who co-carried the offense with Caminero through the first half—coming back to earth in a big way, Tampa Bay has had maybe the most well-rounded offenses since the All-Star Break.

Victor Mesa Jr. is threatening to be the rookie-in-the-postseason star that Randy Arozarena was in 2020. How can you not be romantic about a team that has three of the four players (Chandler Simpson, Cedric Mullins and Taylor Walls) with at least 10 bunt singles this season? They might mess around and lay down three bunts in a single inning and just glitch the Dodgers' brains.

Heading into the postseason, San Diego was the only team hotter than the Dodgers. The Padres won 17 of their final 20 games, including taking two out of three from the Dodgers in Los Angeles.

If you think they're hot now, imagine how we'll feel about this team in two weeks if they can set up an NLCS showdown with their NL West rivals by plowing through the Cubs and Brewers in the first two rounds.

They won't be scared of the Dodgers, either. They want all of that smoke, as evidenced by their NLDS clashes in both 2022 and 2024—San Diego taking the former in four games and Los Angeles surviving the latter in five.

The extremely debatable part is whether the Padres' starting rotation can keep things interesting and hand enough leads to one of the best bullpens in baseball.

Even in that late September series in LA, ace Michael King allowed five earned runs in four innings of work, Nick Pivetta failed to complete five innings and Robbie Ray didn't even make it out of the fourth. That's probably not going to be enough in a best-of-seven showdown.

But if Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill stay red hot, there's a decent chance that San Diego scores its sweetest postseason series win in franchise history.

Quite the "out of the frying pan and into the fire" proposal here. Having the Yankees save us from the Dodgers dynasty would be like bringing in snakes to deal with a scorpion problem. But one problem at a time, right?

For most MLB hitters, facing Tarik Skubal, Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell in consecutive games is a slump waiting to happen.

For Paul Goldschmidt, however, that sounds like an all-you-can-eat buffet.

In 32 career plate appearances against that trio, Goldy has gone 12-for-27 with five home runs, one double and five walks.

The Yankees most likely bench him for the game against Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but Goldschmidt could really set the tone early as the leadoff hitter against the other three aces.

Speaking of aces, the Yankees are the one team that could go toe-to-toe with the Dodgers' rotation.

Cam Schlitter vs. Yamamoto. Max Fried vs. Skubal. Gerrit Cole vs. Glasnow. Carlos Rodón vs. Snell.

Every one of those matchups could be legendary. That's a substantial difference from the 2024 World Series, in which Clarke Schmidt, Luis Gil, Walker Buehler and Ben Casparius each got a start in a five-game series that featured 16 home runs.

New York's biggest edge, though, could be in the bullpen, if Brent Headrick, Paul Blackburn and David Bednar have one more dynamite month left in the tank.

Moreover, the Yankees have done their best offensive work in the seventh and eighth innings this season, which we previously mentioned is where the Dodgers have been most vulnerable.

Milwaukee lost a seven-game battle to the Dodgers in the 2018 NLCS and was later swept by LA in both the 2020 wild card round and the 2025 NLCS. Those have been their only meetings in postseason history.

However, the Brewers have never been this good.

Yes, they were the NL's No. 1 seed for both the 2018 and 2025 showdowns, but their pitching is so much better this year than it was in 2018. After limping to the finish line with a 19-21 record down the stretch last year, they went an MLB-best 29-12 in their final 41 games this time around—a stretch that began with a season-defining series in Los Angeles, taking three out of four from the Dodgers.

Milwaukee's season-long lack of home runs is definitely a concern. Only Toronto (152) ended the regular season with fewer dingers than Milwaukee's 154. Though they held the Dodgers to 3.75 runs per game in the 2025 NLCS, their inability to put runs on the board doomed them.

Maybe their small ball approach works better this time around? They did rank second in the majors in scoring, after all, while leading the majors in on-base percentage.

The bigger question, though, is whether the non-Jacob Misiorowski portion of the starting rotation can hold a candle to what the Dodgers will bring to the table.

Logan Henderson has had a fantastic season, including two strong starts against the Dodgers. He will presumably be No. 2 in their postseason rotation.

However, Kyle Harrison went from "maybe should have been an All-Star" in the first half to a train wreck with an 8.67 ERA over his last 10 appearances. At this point, it's probably Robert Gasser in Game 3 and a Dustin May/Shane Drohan piggyback in Game 4, neither of which is a promising counter to Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell.

But if anyone is going to go full "2014 Madison Bumgarner" and just carry his team to a World Series with gem after gem, it's probably going to be Misiorowski.