2025 Team Previews - Los Angeles Dodgers
As part of my 2025 team previews series, I go through all fantasy-relevant players on the Los Angeles Dodgers ahead of the 2025 season.
Check out the intro and team links page here.
Intro
We have reached the end! Thirty teams, hundreds of players, and probably north of 100,000 words. I started writing it in late October, and I’ve been publishing preview articles since December. And now it’s done! So you have my analysis, ranks, and projections on every fantasy-relevant player for 2025.
A couple of weeks ago, I was making our bed after my wife washed all the sheets. I got to the pillowcases. I looked at them, and I had no idea which one was mine and which was hers, and these were not new pillowcases. Nothing on earth is closer to my eyes for more hours a day than my pillowcase. And yeah, okay, my eyes are closed for most of that time. But it’s the first and last thing I see every day, you would think I knew which one was mine. But I had no idea. I did some logical deduction and probabilities on it and went ahead and picked one. A few days went by, and nothing was said, so I assumed I got it right. But then like a week later, my wife asked me why I switched the pillowcases.
All of that is to say I have a very selective memory. Hearing that, you would think I have no memory at all of the stuff I wrote about the Marlins or White Sox three months ago, but no! I remember it all well. Going through each team and player like I do here gives me a very deep knowledge of the player pool every year. I’ll run into dudes out here in Indiana who are big Cubs or White Sox fans, and they’ll start talking like they know the team so well. But it turns out they can’t even name the fourth starter, the backup catcher, or the top pitching prospect in AA. Pathetic!
I say that jokingly. There was a time in my life when sports knowledge was basically the standard on how you were judged. I’m talking like 5th-8th grade. We didn’t have much else going on, so you might as well start memorizing as many MLB lineups as possible.
None of this stuff is important at the end of the day, but it does help get ready for fantasy drafts, DFS, player props, and everything else that we’ll be doing here for the next eight months. It also gives me something to do all winter, which is nice.
Let’s get into the Dodgers now as we close this baby out.
Roster
I will try to be as harsh as possible here. I’m guessing the average fan isn’t feeling very friendly to the Dodgers these days.
People are talking about the Dodgers having one of the greatest rosters ever constructed. Having Shohei Ohtani gets you a lot of the way there, but what they’ve done this offseason has taken things to a ridiculous level. That said, the bottom half of the lineup isn’t all that impressive.
We could see some decline on Betts and Freeman this year. Teoscar Hernandez is not a consistent player, and he’s over 32 years old now. Max Muncy is hard to rely on. It’s an old team, and there are only three true stars in the lineup. Okay, so that’s two or three more than the rest of the league has, but still! It’s not crazy to think the Dodgers could underwhelm in run scoring. By underwhelm, I mean maybe they’ll be 7th or 8th in baseball or something like that.
The depth and ridiculousness of the team is shown on the pitching side.
Remember that the Dodgers got 100+ innings from just two guys last year, and they were led in innings by Gavin Stone with 140. Glasnow made 22 starts, Yamamoto had 18, Buehler 16, Miller 13, and Kershaw came in with seven. They had all kinds of injury troubles.
Their remedy for that was to go ahead and sign Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki while also returning (at some point) Shohei Ohtani, Dustin May, and Tony Gonsolin to the mix. The bullpen also got stronger with the arrival of Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates. The Dodgers are not going to allow many runs this year, and they have built up quite a backlog of arms just in case they run into more injury issues. It could be a historically good pitching year for LA.
Hitters
Shohei Ohtani
Age: 30
Pos: DH/SP
This is my last team preview, and I’m very excited to be done with them. I’ve also already reviewed all of these players and finished my rankings, so I don’t need to consider everything in detail while I write this to build my rankings. These previews will be a bit shorter and a bit lazier, but let’s see what we can do.
Ohtani is a top two pick in fantasy this year, so you don’t really have to do much deciding on him.
728 PA, .311/.392/.648, 54 HR, 58 SB, 134 R, 130 RBI
Was that the greatest roto fantasy season of all time? I don’t know. But Ohtani is in a unique position here because I absolutely don’t think he can do anything close to that again. Not only is he 30 years old now, he’s also coming back as a pitcher. That will take away at least a little bit of playing time, and any injury that could happen on the hill could cost him a lot of playing time as the DH. It will also surely slow down the steal rate.
During his two big years from 2022 to 2023, while playing on both sides of the ball, his stolen base attempt rate was in the mid-teens. He also clearly just went nuts down the stretch last year while he was chasing that 50-50 season.
You could absolutely see something like a 20-steal season from Ohtani. As long as he stays healthy, though, he’s good for 40 homers and 120+ R+ RBI easily.
I had the #1 pick once this year in an NFBC draft, and I took Bobby Witt. I don’t like the added injury risk, and I don’t like that he immediately clogged my UTIL spot.
But yeah, I don’t think he should fall past pick #2 in any league.
There are those leagues where you have him split. I’d draft the hitter at #2, but I wouldn’t have much interest in the pitcher version of him, and that will be shown in my ranking. He won’t be pitching in games until at least May, and there could be limitations when he does get back on the mound.
If there are any health problems at all with the arm, you would think they’d be willing to shut him down on that side of the ball so long as he can continue to be their DH.
The Dodgers’ #1 priority will be making sure Ohtani is healthy for the postseason, and that could hurt his regular season significantly - and that’s all we care about for fantasy purposes!
It sounds and feels strange to be saying all of this negative stuff about the greatest baseball player to ever live, but I would probably just not have him this year. That doesn’t mean I’m taking Elly or Gunnar over him, but I do prefer Witt Jr., and I’d probably rather pick late in the first round rather than have the #2 pick where I would end up with him.
Rank
Projection
680 PA, 128 R, 46 HR, 97 RBI, 28 SB, .282/.385/.593, $20.48 roto value
24 GS, 120 IP, 3.53 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, 31.5% K%, 8.2% BB%, 10 W
Mookie Betts
Age: 32
Pos: 2B/SS/OF
I would say that Betts is out of his prime years, and we might start seeing the descent now. He missed time last year due to injury, and his performance did fall off a bit when he was on the field
516 PA, .289/.372/.491, 19 HR, 16 SB, 11% K%, 11.8% BB%
That’s still a very good season, and he likely would have cruised past 20-20 if he had stayed on the field. The K% and BB% are also extremely impressive, and that kind of plate discipline should help smooth out the aging curve.
The biggest thing to note is that the barrel rate fell a ton.
Mookie Betts Brl% by Year
2021: 7.8%
2022: 9.7%
2023: 12.2%
2024: 6.0%
That’s a huge drop from 2023, but it wasn’t as far away from his two previous years, where he was still pretty good in the power department. We also saw his 90th-percentile EV drop a ton down to under 102. So the raw power isn’t great, but he does have the benefit of getting a ton of balls in play, pulling a lot of fly balls, and doing a very nice job with the launch angle stuff.
Betts is safe. The runs and RBIs should be fantastic in this Dodgers lineup, and I don’t see a truly bad season in homers or steals, even with the skills possibly degrading.
I can see making a case against him in the first round since so many of those guys can cruise over 25-25. Betts isn’t quite that guy anymore, but he makes up for it with his batting average, runs, and RBI.
Rank
Projection
660 PA, 106 R, 26 HR, 89 RBI, 15 SB, .282/.377/.493, $13.89 roto value
Freddie Freeman
Age: 35
Pos: 1B
Freeman finished his season on the highest of high points, winning the World Series MVP. His regular season was less exciting:
638 PA, .282/.378/.476, 22 HR, 9 SB, 15.7% K%, 12.2% BB%
There are a lot of similarities to Betts here. The age has cost him raw power and some speed, but the plate discipline and bat control have kept him close to the stud tier.
The expected batting average finally fell below .300, and the xwOBA came down significantly as well. I don’t think he’s going to give us a bad batting average, and the runs and RBI will be great. But there is some risk that he ends up around a 20-10 season again, which isn’t all that great for roto leagues.
It’s a different story in points leagues, the volume of the hits, runs, and RBI are so good on him that he’s clearly a tier one first baseman in those leagues - but I’m a bit down on the 35-year-old for categories leagues.
Rank
Projection
664 PA, 92 R, 23 HR, 96 RBI, 10 SB, .274/.370/.464, $12.28 roto value