The 2025 Los Angeles Dodgers are certainly one of the most talented teams ever assembled. Their roster features the reigning National League MVP in Shohei Ohtani; three other former MVP winners in Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Clayton Kershaw; a three-time winner of the Japanese version of the Cy Young Award in Yoshinobu Yamamoto; eight players who were All-Stars in 2024 (Ohtani, Betts, Freeman, Teoscar Hernandez, Will Smith, Tyler Glasnow, Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates); a two-time Cy Young winner in Blake Snell; and perhaps the most electrifying new talent for 2025 in Roki Sasaki.
Indeed, the Dodgers' splurge this winter, following last offseason's signings of Ohtani and Yamamoto, has created "a stress test for the game itself," as ESPN's Jeff Passan wrote in January. Feeling that stress most acutely are fans of bad teams, who might look at the Dodgers and see a broken sport -- or, perhaps, the failings of their own organizations.
This incredible talent disparity between the Dodgers and the bottom of the league begs the question: How many bad teams would it take to beat the Dodgers? Sounds like a fun exercise -- let's find out!
Using the projected WAR and playing time used for the depth charts at FanGraphs, we built two 30-man rosters: One for the Dodgers and then one for the worst teams. We started with the projected worst team in MLB and kept adding teams until we constructed a roster that could beat the Dodgers. Here's how it played out.
