Here’s a hard pill to swallow for Dodgers fans: the team’s late-season hitting struggles might not be a temporary glitch but a sign of something far more permanent. And this is the part most people miss—while the Dodgers celebrated back-to-back World Series wins in 2024 and 2025, a closer look reveals a troubling trend. In a recent deep dive by Katie Woo and Fabian Ardaya in The Athletic (subscription required), a subtle yet alarming detail emerges: the 2025 championship wasn’t powered by an unstoppable offense but by a team scraping by with one of the lowest postseason run totals in the Wild Card era.
Let’s break it down. In 2024, the Dodgers dominated with 95 postseason runs, a historic feat. Fast forward to 2025, and that number plummeted to just 72. But here’s the kicker—this wasn’t just October unpredictability. It was the culmination of a slow, painful decline that began mid-season. By June 2025, the Dodgers boasted baseball’s best offense with a 121 wRC+. By July? They’d plummeted to 26th. Down the stretch, their hitting was inconsistent at best, and in October, they couldn’t muster more than four runs in a nine-inning game after the Wild Card round.
This wasn’t a slump—it was erosion. The once-reliable margin for error vanished. Gone were the days when the Dodgers could coast on talent alone. Now, every hit had to be earned, every run fought for. But here’s where it gets controversial—could this be the first sign of an aging core? The Dodgers fielded the oldest position player group in MLB last year, and it showed. Mookie Betts and Teoscar Hernández, two pillars of the lineup, had career-worst offensive seasons. Both are now entering their age-33 seasons, and the question looms large: Is this the beginning of the end of their superteam era?
It’s an uncomfortable thought for a franchise that’s avoided the word ‘decline’ for a decade. The Dodgers’ machine seemed unstoppable—prospects blossomed into stars, and stars stayed at the top of their game. But aging curves don’t discriminate, and the warning signs are multiplying. Older players don’t just slump more—they slump longer. Recovery slows, bat speed fades, and the ability to punish velocity disappears. Sound familiar? The Dodgers’ inability to string together big innings in 2025 wasn’t just bad luck—it was a symptom of a deeper issue.
The team didn’t collapse in 2025, but they tightened. The offense shrank, the fireworks fizzled into smoke, and the lineup that once felt invincible began to look… average. They still won, but the model is shifting. Los Angeles used to build lineups around players in or near their prime. Now, the roster feels heavy with locked-in contracts, aging timelines, and long-term bets on past success.
This isn’t a doom-and-gloom prediction—it’s a reality check. The Dodgers aren’t falling apart; they’re calcifying. The real danger isn’t that their offense will become bad, but that it will become average—until October, when the pressure is highest and the competition is fiercest. Suddenly, a lineup built on superstar pedigree might look all too human.
What if the slump isn’t a glitch anymore? What if it’s the new normal? That’s the unsettling question Dodgers fans must grapple with. Because even a team with endless resources can’t outrun Father Time forever.
So, what do you think? Is this the start of a decline, or just a temporary hiccup? Let’s hear it in the comments—agree or disagree, the conversation starts here.
