The lesson here, if there is one, is that chaos can come for even the best rosters. The baseball gods are a cantankerous lot, and you know they took the seemingly impenetrable Dodgers\u2019 roster as a challenge. Some of the best Giants seasons in San Francisco history (1997, 2021) happened because the unbeatable Dodgers turned out to be quite beatable, and this could have been one of those seasons. The Giants, however, are still stuck in the hot dog roller, and they\u2019ve only recently come up with the idea to unclip the necktie.\u00a0 They\u2019re working on it. Godspeed.<\/p>\n
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The Giants and Dodgers are a more competitive match-up now than it seemed like it\u2019d be this winter. (Thearon W. Henderson \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s a bigger-picture story about the 2025 Dodgers, though, it\u2019s with the players you\u2019re\u00a0not seeing. Here\u2019s where the Dodgers\u2019 farm system has ranked in Keith Law\u2019s Organizational Rankings before the last several seasons:<\/p>\n
2025<\/a>: 3rd These were uncontroversial rankings. Everyone has loved the Dodgers\u2019 farm system for a long time, and we all know that a conveyor belt of prospects is the true secret sauce of every perennially contending team. (That 10th-place ranking was their lowest in a decade, too.)<\/p>\n Which leads us to the obvious question about the 2025 Dodgers in this context: Where are all the players from those lists? Where is the prospect cavalry that should have arrived for the Dodgers this season? The answers vary wildly. Some of the prospects were dealt away, as you might expect from a perennial contender. Some of the prospects were\/are teenagers and aren\u2019t expected to arrive for years. Some of them have been hurt or disappointing (one of their most highly regarded prospects of the last decade is now catching for the San Jose Giants<\/a>, for example).<\/p>\n The actual answers to the \u201cwhy\u201d aren\u2019t important, though. What matters is that the Dodgers haven\u2019t received a lot of help from those top-ranked farm systems this season. This isn\u2019t to say that the Dodgers haven\u2019t gotten any homegrown help from players under 30. Andy Pages\u2019 offensive game resembles that of Heliot Ramos, but Pages is also a Gold Glove-caliber center fielder, if you can imagine such a thing. Emmett Sheehan is healthy again, and he just pitched seven strong innings.<\/p>\n But in a season where the Dodgers needed to fill more holes than expected, they didn\u2019t get a lot of help from within, outside of Pages and Sheehan. And if you\u2019re wondering what really feels different about the Dodgers this season, that might be it. The great players have been predictably great in most cases, but you can see some of the cracks forming. There haven\u2019t been enough homegrown reinforcements to keep the Dodgers winning at their typical pace.<\/p>\n This is developing concern for a team that\u2019s built around a foundation of over-30 superstars. Pages and Yoshinobu Yamamoto are the only two under-30 players on the Dodgers\u2019 active roster that I would guarantee are still with the organization in 2027. Now consider that the types of superstars the Dodgers have acquired \u2014 Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman \u2014 aren\u2019t always available. There were a lot of cosmic tumblers that had to click into place there, starting with those players\u2019 original teams screwing up in dozens of unlikely ways. The conveyor belt of prospects was always the most important and reliable part of the Dodgers\u2019 success.<\/p>\n And here\u2019s where I\u2019d love to close with a paragraph contrasting that situation with the Giants, who have the kind of roster and farm system that\u2019s perfectly positioned to take advantage of this temporary and rare Dodgers weakness, except that\u2019s not quite true. The Giants might have more young players than the Dodgers with a chance to be on the team in three years, but they don\u2019t have anything resembling a conveyor belt, and they haven\u2019t since Madison Bumgarner broke the machine that made him. If they\u2019re going to take advantage, it\u2019ll have to be with the crew they currently have, along with a few surprises along the way.<\/p>\n
2024<\/a>: 3rd
2023<\/a>: 1st
2022<\/a>: 1st
2021<\/a>: 10th<\/p>\n