Was the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 2024 World Series win ever in doubt?
The Dodgers’ run to the World Series had every setback the sport could throw at the club, yet the Dodgers made their second title of the 2020s feel inevitable in retrospect. The Dodgers’ offseason signing of the sport’s best player, hybrid designated hitter/pitching ace Shohei Ohtani, established the majors’ perennial team-to-beat as the favorite to win it all, but Los Angeles showed remarkable resilience in overcoming injuries, pitching instability and a talented National League field to reach the World Series for the fourth time in eight seasons. Once there, the Dodgers outclassed the New York Yankees in a 4-1 series, a gentleman’s sweep.
The Dodgers look primed to become the first back-to-back World Series champions since the New York Yankees in 1999 and 2000. Ohtani is coming off a remarkable season in which he recorded career-highs in batting average (.310), home runs (54) and stolen bases (59), ranking either first or second in each category in the National League. Obviously, baseball is more than a one-superstar sport, and the Dodgers’ talent across the board is astounding. World Series MVP Freddie Freeman and 8-time All Star Mookie Betts complement Ohtani in a lethal Dodgers lineup, while offseason signing Blake Snell brings a resume with two Cy Youngs to a promising, high-ceiling rotation. The Dodgers are a near-lock for a 13th consecutive season with a playoff bid, but beyond that, the pieces are in place for another deep playoff run in 2024.
But the Dodgers’ quest for a repeat isn’t the story of the summer in Major League Baseball. The best story is the chippy, ultra-competitive NL East division, which pits three legitimate and established World Series contenders that each have the potential to oust the Dodgers, and any American League challenger, in October.
The triumvirate of the Atlanta Braves, Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets check all the boxes to register on the World Series radar, and their collision course throughout the summer will be an endless source of intrigue and entertainment.
Atlanta, the only team out of the three to win a World Series in the past half-decade, snuck into the playoffs in 2024 despite an unbelievable rash of injuries to some of their top contributors, while also featuring the NL Cy Young winner in veteran Chris Sale. The Phillies are the most recent NL East team to make a World Series and knocked the Braves out of the playoffs in 2022 and 2023. And the New York Mets finished third in the NL East in 2024 but advanced to the NL Championship Series, defeating the Phillies in the NLDS to get there. New York didn’t stand pat after their surprising run, signing one of the majors’ best hitters, outfielder Juan Soto, to a 15-year, $765 million contract in the offseason that is the richest in baseball history.
With a cellar dweller in the Miami Marlins and a young Washington Nationals team with a ceiling of a .500 record, the NL East can’t claim to be the best division top-to-bottom — the AL East claims that crown. The AL Central has the most parity of any division race (good luck determining who has the edge between one of the three playoff contestants from the division in 2024 and the fourth-place Twins), while the NL West boasts the consensus top team, the Dodgers.
The NL East is set to put on the best show. The Braves and Phillies have detested each other for years to an extent that is typically reserved for college rivalries or Red Sox-Yankees postseason battles, and the three East Coast mega-fan bases are among the most passionate (and vocal) in the major league landscape. With Soto in the division, the star power in the division is blinding: Atlanta with 2023 NL MVP Ronald Acuña Jr. coming off an injury and Sale, Philadelphia with 2021 NL MVP Bryce Harper and 2024 Cy Young runner-up Zach Wheeler and New York with Soto and 2024 NL MVP runner-up Francisco Lindor. Four of the top seven finalists for NL MVP voting played in the NL East. That is a whole lot of award votes, and each club has even more candidates ready to contend in 2025. This is not quantifiable, but the big-market clubs have a touch of meltdown potential, too, which can sometimes be even more fun to watch.
Look beyond the big names and simmering rivalries, and the projections forecast a thrilling summer — with World Series potential in the fall — in the division.
The baseball statistics website FanGraphs projects all three teams to finish with more than 86 wins in 2025, while giving the Braves a 15.7 percent chance to win the World Series, the Phillies a 5.8 percent chance, and the 4.2 percent chance (ranking second, third and fourth in the 15-team National League). PECOTA, a projection from Baseball Prospectus, moves up the Mets into second place and slots the Braves and Mets to reach 90 wins, with the Phillies, the reigning division champions, still factoring into the playoff conversation at 85.7 wins and a 52 percent chance of reaching the postseason. Atlanta also stands out as having a 9.5 percent chance of winning the World Series per PECOTA’s projection, second in the MLB and behind only the Dodgers.
The feistiness between the division rivals has cranked up a few notches in large part due to the clubs’ recent playoff matchups, but the division should provide plenty of developments to track in the 162-game regular season, too. How will Juan Soto fare in the Mets’ lineup after switching from one New York team to another, and how much damage will the Soto-Lindor one-two punch inflict upon opposing pitching staffs? How will top Atlanta contributors such as Acuña Jr., starter Spencer Strider, third baseman Austin Riley and second baseman Ozzie Albies progress in their returns to action, and can the Braves’ lauded player development system produce another star to support their big names? Will the Phillies take big swings at the trade deadline to support a lineup packed with past All-Stars who may be fading out of their primes, and can Philadelphia stabilize its bullpen in time for a playoff run? On top of those questions, each of the three clubs brings unique approaches in its offseason activity, roster makeup and clubhouse personality, and those differences will make for a truly dynamic and must-watch three-horse race for the division that won’t feel stale over the lengthy MLB regular season.
Alright, maybe baseball fans won’t be able to forget the Dodgers — a team with the potential to win back-to-back titles for the first time in decades is a compelling storyline, certainly. But the Dodgers’ path (and the rest of the MLB clubs’ paths, for that matter) to the 2025 World Series will be dictated in large part by the rivalries brewing in the potent NL East, which promises contenders with proven track records and tantalizing playoff upside. Stay tuned.
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