Remember the line from “The Great Gatsby” in which the protagonist fights the notion of being unable to repeat the past? Although it is a slippery slope, the Yankees, more than any other team in baseball, must—in the first step towards a journey to the top spot in the sport—look to their past. It isn’t about trying to recreate exactly what we once saw because that can never be done; it’s a necessary effort to understand the disconnect between the fan base and management as to what exactly dictates desired success and how far off they are from each other.

Before the late ’90s dynasty, the Yankees had lean years as a trigger-happy team in the hands of George Steinbrenner. Winning it all was all that mattered, and the inability to see certain moves through created plenty of turmoil. That is not what we want, but nearly as disappointing is the current feeling that the front office is content with a ticket to the dance and let it be what it will once it arrives.

The Yankees are now coming up on nearly two decades without a World Series title. And with a winning club for the entirety of this run plus resources second to none in the American League, it is unfathomable that not only have they not won a title, but they also haven’t come close to one—going down 3-0 before losing the World Series in five in misery back in 2024, their sole appearance to the Fall Classic since 2009.

Plenty of the Yankee teams in this period have been good, even very good, but have any of them been great enough long enough that you could justify management’s conformism with just running it back enough times until they eventually pull through? There are tough breaks here and there, but if we look through the list of the most dominant teams in the sport over the past 10 years or so, how many Yankee teams could make the list? How many times did it truly feel like an injustice that they came up short? It has routinely seemed like the 2018 Red Sox, the 2020 Dodgers, and the 2022 Astros have been more well-rounded, naming a few.

So much of the focus is on Aaron Boone for continuously dropping playoff series against teams with a better record. Obviously he has a lot of blame there, but can we stop to figure out why the Yankees keep coming up against superior opposition in the postseason in the first place? Take these last two seasons, for instance: the Yankees couldn’t even be the best team in their division. And it’s not as if, outside of Aaron Judge’s missed time, you could point to a high level of underperformance in the regular season that’s a factor among other sustained contenders. In fact, several of the key players performed well above expectations, such as the likes of Ben Rice and Cam Schlittler.

Disappointment comes in different shapes and sizes. The one from the last two seasons is much more about the built-up frustration of a long drought than the letdown of a team you truly believed would win it all. The here we go again feeling has gotten a little too familiar.

That said, the Yankees don’t have a talent issue, but you can count on one hand the number of times during this run that they fell short of a title, and you truly felt like they got the short end of the stick as the top team. That should be the goal—not to build just one of the very good teams, but to be the absolute best, and then if you are, eventually the breaks are going to go your way—eventually you’ll make your own breaks.

There’s a school of thought which suggests that the Diamondbacks “broke” the Dodgers, by beating them in the 2023 National League Division Series. Not just by the defeat, but by the manner of it. It was a sweep, with Arizona outscoring Los Angeles 19-6, never trailing in any game at any point, and leading by two runs or more, at the end of 25 of the 27 innings played. That winter, the Dodgers engaged beast mode, giving contracts worth over a billion dollars in total to Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto alone, and haven’t stopped spending since. Including a staggering $183 million in luxury tax penalties – more than a dozen teams paid in payroll – their 2026 salary bill was over $616 million.

I can’t argue they have not spent effectively, winning three division titles, and averaging 97 wins. But it has been in the post-season where their dominance has become near-total. Remember, in the playoffs, you’re facing the best teams the rest of baseball has to offer. But since the Diamondbacks gave them the bum’s rush out of the 2023 post-season, the Dodgers have won eight consecutive playoff series, and are 27-10, a .730 win percentage. Again, this is not facing the Colorado Rockies, but other division winners and wild-card teams. If the Brewers or (probably) Rays can’t stop them, they’ll become the first team to three-peat since 2000.

Under normal circumstances, I would be cheering wholeheartedly for their opponents, as has been the case in the last two seasons. #TeamAnyoneButLA. But this year, there’s a concern that might over-ride this. Specifically, that if anyone except the Los Angeles Dodgers wins the World Series – especially a relatively small-market team like the Brewers or the Rays – it might mute demands for a salary cap in the upcoming CBA negotiations. That’s something I feel is essential to the basic survival of major-league baseball, in terms of competitive balance. But a Rays/Brewers victory could potentially be used by the players as proof everything is fine. “See? You can’t buy success!”

It’s not really the case. The problem has never been the post-season, where randomness plays a significant factor. Let’s be honest. The 2023 Diamondbacks who won 83 games were not a “better” team, by any objective measure, than the 92-win Brewers, 100-win Dodgers or 90-win Phillies. But Arizona went 9-3 against that trio, including 6-2 on the road, on their way to the World Series. This is baseball. Get “hot” at the right time, and who knows what can happen. The issue is the regular season. The NL West has turned into six months of grinding and irrelevant tedium, a procession where non-Dodger fans look at the Central and East standings more than their own division.

This predates the 2023 NLDS. The Dodgers have taken 13 of the last 14 division titles – and won 106 games the sole season they didn’t come first. It’s only when you look at the standings since 2013, that the degree of Los Angeles’s domination becomes clear. Over the roughly 13 1/3 seasons in that time (2020 being the one-third), they have won over a hundred games more than any other team. Not “any other NL West team”, any other team. The second-placed Yankees are closer to the tenth-placed Cubs, than they are to the Dodgers. Here’s the average standings in the NL West, from 2013-2026.

1. Los Angeles Dodgers: 99-63
2. San Francisco Giants: 80-82
3. San Diego Padres: 80-82
4. Arizona Diamondbacks: 78-84
5. Colorado Rockies: 69-93

Over a fourteen-year period – bold font, please – the Dodgers have averaged 99 wins per season, while every other team in the division is below .500. Their win percentage of .610 over that time is the best in the integrated era. To find anything higher, you need to go back to the 1947-1960 Yankees, who had a .622 win percentage in the regular season, and won eight World Series during that span, including five in a row. In other words, the Dodgers under their current ownership are the most powerful major-league team in over sixty years. Arguably more: that Yankees dynasty failed to win their division twice, in 1954 and 1959; the Dodgers only once.

That’s what “competitive balance” looks like, according to the players’ union. The Brewers winning the World Series is not going to change this, or the fact that the Dodgers’ current television deal alone [$8.35 billion over 25 years, an AAV of $334 million] is worth more, according to Forbes, than every revenue stream the D-backs possess. The LA Times reports, “By the time the deal ends in 2038, the Dodgers will be getting more than $500 million per year” – and making things worse, it’s largely exempt from revenue sharing.

It’s simply impossible for anyone else in the NL West to compete under the current system, A third consecutive Dodgers’ World Series win would underscore this, and hopefully make it almost impossible for any eventual agreement between the owners and players not to include a salary cap (and floor, of course). Would LA coming up short make a difference? Hard to say. ESPN recently had an interesting article looking at this very topic, asking executives and players what impact (if any) the results of the World Series would have on negotiations. The general opinion: a three-peat for LA would entrench positions. To quote an NL player:

It’ll be bad. The league is going to dig in a lot more. And we know the union isn’t going to go for a cap, so it’s going to get really bad. Nobody wants to see the Dodgers win. No owner does. None of the fans do. But I think it’s going to make this all worse.

Conversely, an NL executive said, “A small-market club [with a strong front office] winning the World Series going into an adversarial offseason would likely allow players to make the argument that the game is in a healthy place from a parity standpoint.” Personally, I’ve already reached acceptance that, if it’s necessary for us to lose games next year – or even the entire season – in order to get significant change, then so be it. It’s a price I’m willing to pay. I’m beginning to feel that, if the Dodgers winning the World Series helps achieve the necessary change, then I might be forced to suck it up, hold my nose and – in a thoroughly non-political sense – “Vote blue, no matter who.”

It’s that time of year where teams are shaking up their front office structure and interviews are happening. We know that Sam Fuld was in the running to take the A’s president of baseball operations position, but that has apparently not come to pass.

Being tasked with leading the A’s into Las Vegas was apparently something that Fuld was not interested in, so he will remain with the Phillies. Of note, he is still the president of business operations with the Phillies, not baseball operations. One wonders if that job will be his if/when Dave Dombrowski decides to finally hang them up here in Philadelphia.

It felt inevitable even in the early stages of the season that the two best teams in MLB would be on a collision course for a seismic encounter in the NLCS. The Brewers and Dodgers were the only two teams to finish with at least 100 wins, and by the time both teams jumped out to comfortable leads atop their respective divisions by mid-July, you could sense we were destined for a rematch of last season’s NLCS. It should be a far more competitive series than last October, when rampant Dodgers squad swept the Brewers by holding Milwaukee to just one run in each of the four games.

There’s no easing into this series — all signs are pointing to a dream matchup of Tarik Skubal vs. Jacob Misiorowski in Game 1, pitting the two-time defending AL Cy Young against this season’s presumptive NL Cy Young winner. There was a not insignificant chance that the two aces could have shared a rotation, Milwaukee showing legitimate interest right up until the Dodgers swooped in and acquired Skubal from the Tigers at the deadline. Los Angeles has also tabbed 2025 World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto to start Game 2 while the Brewers have yet to select a starter beyond Game 1.

This year’s Dodgers remains the juggernaut they’ve been during this World Series-winning run, but make no mistake, this is a young Brewers squad with an extra year of experience under their belts and the hunger to avenge last year’s sweep and make it to their first World Series since their one and only appearance in 1982.

Los Angeles Dodgers

Regular season record: 100-62 (1st, NL West)

(Beat Braves in NLDS, 3-1)

This is just as complete a Dodgers team as the one who secured back-to-back World Series titles, Los Angeles keeping their championship core largely intact while making a Cy Young-sized upgrade to the starting rotation. Their offense placed second in MLB behind the Cubs in wRC+ (111) and fWAR (26.9) and is a blend of contact and power, their .257 team batting average and .424 slugging also second-best in MLB. Their starting rotation was tops in the Majors in fWAR (18.7) and second behind the Yankees in ERA (3.43) and FIP (3.69), the group of Skubal, Yamamoto, Blake Snell, and Tyler Glasnow posing comfortably the highest ceiling of any starting staff in the land. The biggest improvement over last year is their bullpen, which ranked second in MLB in strikeout rate (26.2-percent) and third in FIP (3.67).

Offense

The Dodgers advanced past the Braves pretty handily despite Shohei Ohtani remaining mostly absent for the series. It was part of a protracted slump to end the year for the four-time MVP, Ohtani mustering just a 72 wRC+ in September and a 106 mark in the second half. His last home run was on August 18th, the downturn in form likely the result of left knee and right biceps injuries that convinced the Dodgers to remove him from the rotation to DH full time in early July. He went 2-for-13 in the NLDS and will have his streak of three straight NL MVPs snapped by Pete Crow-Armstrong.

Also largely absent from the NLDS were Mookie Betts and Andy Pages. Betts got red-hot to end the regular season but couldn’t carry that into the series against the Braves, where he had a 75 wRC+ in 17 plate appearances. Pages established himself as one of the game’s premier center fielders this year and last, but was only good for a 77 wRC+ in 15 plate appearances.

Instead, the onus was on Max Muncy, Freddie Freeman, and Kyle Tucker to carry the load against Atlanta. Ever-reliable postseason performer Max Muncy led the way with three home runs and three RBIs to extend his lead atop the franchise postseason home run list to 19. Freeman hit a pair of home runs and drove in a pair against his former team to earn a 174 wRC+ while Tucker batted .333 with a 151 wRC+.

Starting rotation

The Dodgers provided a blueprint for how they might deploy their four-headed rotation monster of Skubal, Yamamoto, Snell, and Glasnow with each pitcher making one start in the NLDS. With Skubal and Yamamoto already lined up for the first two games, I imagine Snell and Glasnow will start Games 3 and 4, respectively, based on rest.

Skubal pitched to a 2.61 ERA and 2.36 FIP in ten regular season starts for LA and allowed a run on two hits and two walks with seven strikeouts in six innings in the Dodgers’ Game 1 win over the Braves. Yamamoto was even better in Game 3, holding Atlanta to a run on four hits and a walk with ten strikeouts in seven innings following a brilliant regular season in which he went 14-9 in 28 starts with a 2.53 ERA, 3.33 FIP, and 182 strikeouts in 185 innings. Snell was limited to just nine regular season starts in another injury-plagues season, but was dominant to the tune of a 1.90 ERA and 1.72 FIP without giving up a home run in 42.2 innings. He started their lone loss of the NLDS, lasting just 3.2 innings in Game 2 after allowing a run on three hits and five walks. Like Snell, Glasnow was largely unavailable in the regular season, making just 13 starts with a 3.53 ERA and 2.74 FIP, but he helped seal the series in Atlanta by pitching 4.2 innings of one-run ball on one hit and five walks with five strikeouts in the decisive Game 4.

Bullpen

Often the one shaky unit of their playoff runs, the Dodgers bullpen has looked far more settled this postseason. Edwin Díaz returned from a disastrous regular season that saw him demoted from the closer role and suffer elbow and neck injuries to make three scoreless appearances and secure two saves against the Braves. Roki Sasaki, Brock Stewart, and Alex Vesia didn’t allow a run in their combined five innings of relief while Edgardo Henriquez’s fastball has touched as high as 104 mph. Only Tanner Scott struggled, allowing two runs in 2.2 innings, but he still struck out four of the 11 batters he faced.

Milwaukee Brewers

Regular season record: 103-59 (1st, NL Central)

(Beat Padres in NLDS, 3-1)

The Brewers were the class of MLB, pacing the league with 103 wins. They are what every team aspires to be, blending a cutting edge analytics department with robust player development successes to both produce homegrown cornerstone talent and squeeze as much surplus value out of every player who joins the organization — proof that you do not need a salary cap to make small market teams competitive.

Their offense remained remarkably consistent relative to last year. In 2025, they posted a .257 average, .736 OPS, 166 home runs, a 107 wRC+, and 28.4 fWAR. In 2026, they posted a .257 average, .743 OPS, 154 home runs, a 107 wRC+, and 26.1 fWAR, their offense ranking third right behind the Dodgers in wRC+ and fWAR. Their starting pitching took a big step forward as you might expect when led by a historic campaign from The Miz, the unit finishing fourth in MLB in FIP (3.73) and fWAR (15.6) and fifth in ERA (3.61). The bullpen remained an undeniable strength as it does every year, placing in the top-four in ERA (3.40) and FIP (3.70).

Offense

The Brewers were led by ascending superstar Jackson Chourio, who became the all-time franchise leader with five postseason home runs at only 22 years old. Despite just a 73 wRC+ in the series overall, he hit the game-tying two-run homer in Game 1 and the walk-off RBI single with two strikes and two outs off Padres closer Mason Miller in Game 2. He batted .291 with 25 home runs and a 130 wRC+ in the regular season and drove in six in just four games against San Diego.

Their most consistent contributor against the Padres was William Contreras, who went 6-for-16 with two home runs, two RBIs, and a 225 wRC+. Christian Yelich was 5-for-14 with a 162 wRC+ while Jake Bauers and Sal Frelick were on-base machines in that series. Brice Turang, Garrett Mitchell, Joey Ortiz, and Cooper Pratt were all above average by wRC+ during the regular season but none of that quartet did much of anything in the NLDS. If Turang in particular can find his swing after posting a 6 wRC+ in 18 PAs, you’d like their chances a lot more against an LA starting rotation that’s in a league above the Padres.

Starting rotation

If the Brewers are going to have any chance of advancing to the World Series, it’s going to come down to pitching, specifically Jacob Misiorowski. He will likely run away with the NL Cy Young after leading MLB in ERA (1.80), FIP (2.17), strikeouts (252) and fWAR (6.6). He allowed two runs on four hits and a walk with six strikeouts in four innings in the Brewers’ Game 1 victory, and in all likelihood will have to start twice and probably make a relief appearance against the Dodgers. He struck out nine in five innings of two-run ball in Game 3 of last year’s NLCS against LA.

The quality of options in the rotation after him thins out significantly with Robert Gasser, Logan Henderson, and Dustin May each making one start in the NLDS. Henderson pitched to a 2.47 ERA and 3.32 FIP in 18 regular season starts, the rookie holding the Padres to two runs on two hits and three walks in five innings of a Game 2 walk-off win. Gasser posted a 3.87 ERA and 4.23 FIP in 20 regular seasons starts and held San Diego to a run on three hits and a walk in four innings of the series-clinching Game 4 win. May is the clear black sheep of the bunch, struggling mightily in ten starts after joining from the Cardinals at the deadline and getting tagged for two runs on three hits and two walks of a Game 3 loss.

Bullpen

In my opinion, the X-factor of this series will be the Brewers bullpen, who was taxed heavily in their four games against San Diego, yet have still posted the second-lowest bullpen ERA of any playoff team at 1.80. I expect Milwaukee to continue to lean on the high leverage, high velocity dual threat of Aaron Ashby and Trevor Megill, the pair combining to toss nine scoreless innings and secure two saves against San Diego. DL Hall, Anthonio Senzatela, and Abner Uribe might not strike out ten-percent of batters they faced but the three held San Diego scoreless across 7.2 combined innings. The unit as a whole is a ground ball generating machine facing a Dodgers team that posted the third-lowest ground ball rate in the majors.