Entering the 2025 season, fans across Major League Baseball repeatedly claimed that the Los Angeles Dodgers were “ruining baseball” by building a superteam. The Dodgers, coming off a World Series, kept trying to improve, adding Blake Snell, Michael Conforto, Roki Sasaki, Kirby Yates and Tanner Scott to an already loaded roster.
But we’re now through the first month of the season, and the early returns in LA have already demonstrated that there’s no such thing as a “superteam” in baseball.
There might be no better example than Monday night’s game at Dodger Stadium, which matched up two teams with one of the largest payroll disparities in baseball history. The Dodgers, with their $400 million roster, and the Miami Marlins, who’ve spent just $68 million on salaries, despite taking in tens of millions each year from revenue-sharing alone.
The Dodgers jumped out to a 5-0 lead, but reliever Anthony Banda gave up a game-tying Grand Slam to Dane Myers in the top of the 6th inning.
Yes, the Dodgers wound up winning in extra innings, thanks to a Tommy Edman single, but Monday’s game, and the rest of the series, show how easy it is for best-laid plans to fall apart. Quickly.
Los Angeles Dodgers Superteam Plans Already Falling Apart
So the $68 million anonymous Marlins came from behind down 5-0 to the $400 million world-beating Dodgers. Took a 6-5 lead into the bottom of the 10th inning. And lost on an 81mph bloop single. Money can’t buy everything. And that’s just the start of it.
The Dodgers rotation was supposed to be anchored by Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, two elite starting pitchers with exceptional strikeout rates.
Instead, one month into the season, both are on the injured list. Indefinitely.
Snell made just two starts before going down with a shoulder injury. While the team and manager Dave Roberts maintained they weren’t concerned, he was once again shut down from throwing after feeling discomfort during a recent bullpen session. That still left Glasnow, who worked during the offseason to revamp his mechanics in an attempt to avoid further injury.
Sure enough, Glasnow left his second most recent start with cramps, then was pulled from Sunday’s game after just one inning with shoulder discomfort. He’s on the injured list now too. Blake Treinen has “forearm tightness,” often a precursor to Tommy John. Brusdar Graterol remains out. Michael Kopech has yet to pitch this year. That’s not all.
Shohei Ohtani‘s pitching debut is still months away. Clayton Kershaw is on a rehab assignment and several weeks away, at best. Snell and Glasnow are a massive question mark. Roki Sasaki and Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitch once a week, and Sasaki has shown plenty of growing pains in the transition to MLB. Dustin May is pitching regularly for the first time in two seasons.
So for a team that was supposed to have unlimited pitching depth, on Tuesday, LA will have its second bullpen game in a week. How quickly things change.
Tony Gonslin returns from arm surgery, and a back injury, on Wednesday. But in a surprisingly extremely competitive NL West, giving away games, overworking the bullpen, and relying on previously injured pitchers is not how LA drew it up.
That’s just the pitching. Michael Conforto is hitting .169 with a woeful .289 slugging percentage and .592 OPS thus far, after putting up a .759 OPS in 2024 in San Francisco. Max Muncy is hitting .188 with a .547 OPS and zero home runs to start the season.
Even with the injuries and underperformance, the Dodgers are 19-10 and tied for first place in their division. But with Snell and Glasnow out, and several more TBD’s on the pitching horizon, LA’s already talking about converting reliever Ben Casparius to a full-time starter to cover depth. They’re platooning Conforto, and having Miguel Rojas pick up starts instead of Max Muncy.
The Dodgers are better able to withstand the barrage of injuries in part due to their money. But their depth, what’s allowing them to remain competitive, is mostly home-grown or relatively cheap. Casparius is an organizational prospect. Dustin May, Tony Gonsolin, Andy Pages, Tommy Edman.
Still, those are hardly the names you’d expect to see on a “superteam.” That’s because there’s no such thing; injuries, random variance, and the thin margins in baseball make sure of that.
