The Dodgers went into the trade deadline as the obvious magnet for the biggest name on the board, and they didn’t leave empty-handed. Los Angeles landed Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers days before the deadline, then kept adding with Ben Rortvedt, Kris Bubic, Seth Halvorsen and Hunter Feduccia. On paper, that’s the kind of deadline haul that should send a contender’s stock soaring.
Instead, ESPN’s Bradford Doolittle handed the Dodgers a jolt in the opposite direction.
In his updated win total, playoff, and World Series projections, Doolittle pegged Los Angeles at a 97.1 average win total, down from 106.2, with a 99.9% chance to make the playoffs, down from 100%, and a 13.8% chance to win the title, down from 36.1%. That’s a 22.3% drop in World Series odds after the deadline.
For a team that just added Skubal to an already loaded roster, that number is jarring. But the current slide helps explain why the projections shifted so sharply. The Dodgers have lost six straight and eight of their last 10, and they’re no longer sitting in first or even second place in the NL.
If the season had ended before Friday’s games, Los Angeles wouldn’t have earned a first-round bye. Shohei Ohtani is still hitting well, but he hasn’t pitched and might not pitch again for a long time this season. Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell remain out, Will Smith is still on the injured list, Dalton Rushing is now also not likely to catch again this season, and Freddie Freeman is banged up as well.
So yes, there are real issues here. But a drop that steep still feels extreme, especially with the Dodgers now sitting below the Milwaukee Brewers, whose odds are 18.6%.
It leaves one of two explanations: Los Angeles was priced as an even bigger runaway favorite earlier in the year, or the recent skid is carrying far too much weight in the update. Either way, the number is hard to ignore.
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Max Muncy Became One Of The Dodgers Best Bets Ever
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Now 35, Muncy is still giving the Dodgers the kind of steady impact that made him so valuable in the first place. His continued success has come with a simple explanation on his end: better health. For a player whose path nearly took him out of the sport entirely, the fact that he is still performing at a high level in 2026 only adds to the sense that Los Angeles found far more than a reclamation project. [Read more 🡒]