The Dodgers do not have to do anything. They’re in on everything, including Tarik Skubal.
With one week left before baseball’s trade deadline, the Dodgers are doing what the Dodgers always do. When you are flush with money and prospects, you can invite yourself into just about every conversation, from checking in on a star player to sniffing around for a three-way deal in which you trade away major league depth to acquire even more prospects.
“Not having an acute need at this time of year is very helpful,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said Tuesday.
It ain’t bragging if you can back it up. The Dodgers boast baseball’s best record, with seven key players expected to return from significant injuries over the next two months. Then comes the quest for a three-peat: the chance to become the first team in National League history to win three consecutive World Series championships.
To me, that should be the most compelling element of the Dodgers’ trade deadline strategy.
Friedman repeatedly has said he would like this era to be remembered as “the golden age of Dodger baseball,” and nothing says legacy like doing something that never has been done.
And, if major league owners get their way, something that might never be done again.
We’re not just talking about the owners of teams tired of getting beaten by the Dodgers. We’re talking about Friedman’s boss, Mark Walter.
“We can’t win all the time,” Walter told me this spring.
The owners are prepared to shut down the sport until they get a salary cap, but even a compromise with the players’ union would almost certainly involve some kind of spending restraints intended to make Friedman’s job tougher.
Act now, even in a way that might make you feel uncomfortable, because this chance might never come again.
“We feel this current team is as talented and tight-knit of a group as we’ve had,” Friedman said, “and we’ve been extremely aggressive over the past offseasons to try to put that group together.
“To the extent we can add to it, we’ve shown in the past that we’ll be aggressive on that front as well, but it’s good going into this last week feeling as good as we do about this group.”
On the one hand, Friedman himself, and Walter himself, and Dave Roberts and Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts and a cast of heroes talked up a three-peat at last year’s championship celebration.
Walter: “All I have to say to you is, we’ll be back next year.”
Friedman: “How about we do it again?”
Betts: “Three-peat ain’t never sounded so sweet.”
On the other hand, well, the Dodgers won the World Series last year without trading for the outfielder and closer the world said they needed, then committed $309 million to outfielder Kyle Tucker and closer Edwin Díaz in the winter.
“We don’t really think of the 2026 World Series as a three-peat,” Friedman said Tuesday. “ ‘24 and ‘25 are in the bank. As soon as you get into the offseason and into spring training, it’s all about winning in ‘26.
“That is somewhat semantics, but the context is that it’s no different than in any other year, in the sense of doing everything we can to win the last game of the year. I would think the aggressiveness last offseason would fully demonstrate that.”
On Tuesday, Fangraphs projected the Dodgers had a 25% chance to win the World Series, more than twice as high as any other team. A third catcher would help, and a reliever might too, but neither would lift that percentage in any meaningful way so much as provide insurance should Will Smith’s recovery from his neck injury stall or the bullpen implode.
Skubal might not lift that percentage much, either, in place of Ohtani or Blake Snell or Tyler Glasnow in the starting rotation. The Dodgers project all three to be healthy in October and, if not, they have All-Star Justin Wrobleski.
But Wrobleski already has set a professional high for innings pitched, and Skubal would provide a big lift to the teams most likely to keep the Dodgers from returning to the World Series: the Milwaukee Brewers, Atlanta Braves and Chicago Cubs.
And, although the Dodgers pride themselves on running a team whose championship window never closes, they already field the oldest lineup in the majors. In the NHL, owners shut down an entire season to get a salary cap.
Let’s say the 2027 baseball season starts late. By the end of the season, the Dodgers could field a lineup in which every position player besides Andy Pages was at least 30 years old, including Freddie Freeman at 38, Max Muncy at 37, Betts at 34 and Ohtani at 33.
Friedman called it “a fool’s errand” to try to predict the outcome of collective bargaining negotiations and disputed the thought that the Dodgers might miss a window by not maximizing whatever chance they have this year.
“I just think this is a really, really talented team,” he said. “If we had an acute need and it was like, ‘Oh, you didn’t address that,’ then, yeah, we missed an opportunity.
“In this game, there’s just no guarantees of anything. You just make the smartest decisions you can and hope it plays out in a way where you have some good fortune and you win the last game of the year.”
Perhaps “three-peat” should not be the word of the week. Perhaps we should substitute “three-peat-maxxing.”
