Déjà vu all over again? Dodgers are favorites as 2025 MLB season begins

LOS ANGELES — The 2025 Major League Baseball season gets fully underway Thursday, with 14 games. One team is the overwhelming favorite to win the World Series — the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers, who are the defending champions, are led by Japanese superstar and the biggest name in baseball, Shohei Ohtani. And they may have an even better team this season.

The first of the games, featuring 28 of the 30 teams, will feature the New York Yankees against the Milwaukee Brewers at Yankee Stadium. The Dodgers open against the Detroit Tigers at Dodger Stadium.

During the offseason Los Angeles’ deep-pocketed ownership group worth many billions of dollars, spent lavishly to acquire a number of highly sought free agents. The biggest among those acquisitions is another Japanese star, right-handed pitcher Roki Sasaki. The 2025 Dodger payroll is more than $320 million, the largest in baseball, prompting some fans of opposing teams to label the Dodgers, perhaps enviously, “the Evil Empire.”

The New York Mets will be another closely watched team this season. During the offseason the Mets, owned by billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen, signed the biggest free agent of them all this year. They persuaded Juan Soto to leave crosstown rivals, the New York Yankees. The 26-year-old Dominican agreed to a 15-year contract worth $765 million — the richest contract in baseball history.

Soto says he decided to move from the Bronx to Queens, motivated by the Mets’ desire to win. “Definitely that was one of the things that opened my eyes, more, how hungry they are to win a championship and build a dynasty,” he said when he signed.

The Mets are viewed as the biggest threat to the Dodgers in the National League, along with the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies.

In the American League the Yankees are still thought by many to be the team to beat despite losing two of their key players from 2024. In addition to Soto, the Yankees will also be without the ace of their pitching staff. Gerrit Cole underwent Tommy John surgery earlier this month to repair a torn right ulnar collateral ligament and will miss the entire 2025 season. The Yankees hope the impact of those losses will be lessened by their signing of free agent pitcher Max Fried, who last year played for the Atlanta Braves.

Other teams in the American League to keep an eye on this season include the Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Guardians and Boston Red Sox.

Two other teams will play their entire home schedules at very small and unusual ballparks. The Tampa Bay Rays are not able to play their home games at their regular stadium, Tropicana Field, which was damaged last October by Hurricane Milton. Their home in 2025 will be Steinbrenner Field, the spring training park for the Yankees.

Meanwhile, the team formerly known as the Oakland A’s will play their home games in West Sacramento, Calif., at the ballpark used by the minor league Sacramento River Cats. The A’s are set to move to Las Vegas but the new stadium being planned on the Vegas Strip isn’t expected to be ready until 2028. This season the name of the team will not include any city. The team will simply be called the “A’s” or the “Athletics.”

At the beginning of the season, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where the best bankrolled teams don’t end near the top at the end of the season.

And that’s a growing concern among some baseball observers who worry about the issue of competitive balance. A constant question is whether small market and less wealthy teams can realistically compete against the mega-wealthy clubs. If this turns out to be a season where the “haves” again dominate the “have nots,” we can expect increased calls pushing for baseball to adopt some type of salary cap.