Can any NL team dethrone the Dodgers? Sure! Here are the possibilities

Every MLB team is chasing the Dodgers these days. But that race is particularly pertinent in the National League, where contending clubs know that the road to reaching the World Series likely runs through Chavez Ravine.

The two-time defending World Series champs sure don’t make it easy. In what some mistakenly thought would be a pretty chill winter for the Dodgers, they instead landed the top position player on the board in outfielder Kyle Tucker and one of the game’s greatest closers in Edwin Díaz.

Jeez, what’s next? A trade for Tarik Skubal? (Well, actually, that could still happen, too, for all we know.)

But the Dodgers aren’t the NL’s only elite team, and this offseason we’ve seen some of the league’s best make serious efforts to position themselves to be, well, the league’s best. So let’s take a look at the NL clubs who seemingly have the best shot at dethroning the Dodgers, listed in order of likelihood.

1. Mets
Some (read: many) will take issue with me listing the Mets first after they fell on their face and missed the postseason last year. But that was a terrible underachievement by a talented team, and after New York remade about 30% of its roster, there’s no sober assessment of roster strengths that wouldn’t list it among the most talented teams in MLB again.

This has been an odd but ultimately compelling offseason in Queens. The Mets are taking massive defensive risks (and potentially making history) with Bo Bichette at third base and Jorge Polanco at first. They let Díaz walk to the Dodgers, and it remains to be seen if they were right to trust the underlying metrics about Devin Williams’ 2025 instead of just sticking with what works. They have a lot of injury concerns baked into this roster.

But being strong up the middle matters, and the Mets should be just that after having one of the worst defensive teams in baseball last year. Now, though? They’ve got Francisco Lindor at short, Marcus Semien at second and Luis Robert Jr. in center. The front end of the rotation is undoubtedly better now with Freddy Peralta, along with a full season from young star Nolan McLean.

Will the new-look roster gel and have better cohesion and chemistry than the old group? No clue. But the Mets rank third in FanGraphs’ projected team WAR, behind only the Dodgers and Yankees. So despite all the justifiable frustration from their fans when popular players departed this offseason, they certainly have the talent to go deep and give the Dodgers a run for their money should they meet on the postseason stage.

2. Braves
Yep, at the risk of being banished from the great city of Philadelphia, I’m putting another drastically disappointing 2025 team from the NL East ahead of the defending NL East champs in this particular ranking.

The Braves’ issues in 2025 weren’t difficult to diagnose: They couldn’t keep their best players on the field. In the rotation, especially, Chris Sale and Spencer Schwellenbach both spent long stretches on the IL, Reynaldo López made one start before requiring shoulder surgery and Spencer Strider wasn’t the same upon his return from Tommy John. In the lineup, Austin Riley endured an injury-marred campaign, and the Braves were pretty much out of the running before Ronald Acuña Jr. even made it back from left knee surgery.

To list the Braves here requires belief in better health in 2026. This belief is already being tested by an offseason injury to re-signed shortstop Ha-Seong Kim, and I’d like to see Atlanta add another starter to its current group.

Still, I like the possibilities for the rotation with Sale in a contract year, Strider further removed from surgery, López coming back and youngster Hurston Waldrep in the mix after his impressive big league break-in. And the Braves definitely beefed up their bullpen by signing free agent Robert Suárez for the eighth and re-signing Raisel Iglesias for the ninth.

Oh, and a full season of Acuña can’t hurt. So the Braves are a strong bounceback candidate.

3. Phillies
You can just as easily list the Phillies first or second on this list. I didn’t do that because I found their offseason to be pretty underwhelming. And between their flat performance in recent Octobers, age issues and rotation questions, I feel more comfortable listing them here than up top.

Remember: The goal here isn’t to pick a division champ but to assess which clubs would be best positioned to down the Dodgers in a short series. Right now, we don’t know enough about Zack Wheeler’s return from thoracic outlet decompression surgery to confidently state that he’ll be back to his status as an ace among aces come October. Nor do we know if top prospect Andrew Painter will be the real deal and help the Phillies fill the void left by Ranger Suárez’s departure.

The outfield remains iffy with the addition of a veteran player (Adolis García) coming off two sub-average seasons and a rookie (Justin Crawford, the Phillies' No. 3 prospect) who has yet to make his big league debut.

Everything else is pretty much the same … but one year older (by my math). The Phillies’ average position player age of 30.3 was second only to the Dodgers at 30.7. Both teams are at risk of showing their age. People don’t harp on that issue with Los Angeles as much as they do with Philadelphia because the Dodgers have won three rings this decade. The Phillies are an immensely talented team that still has a lot to prove. And they’re running out of time to prove it. But they should again be in the mix among the NL’s top teams this year.

4. Cubs
This offseason, the Cubs have generally acted like the big-market team that they are. They dealt a Top 100 Prospect in Owen Caissie for a high-octane, high-upside rotation boost in Edward Cabrera, who gives their rotation a much different dimension. And they brought in the proven pedigree of Alex Bregman to anchor their infield and clubhouse. They also deepened their ‘pen.

Good stuff.

Of course, the Cubs did all that while seemingly declining to make a significant effort to retain Tucker, which counters the “big market” narrative a bit. But when the final price tag is $60 million in average annual value for a player listed No. 21 in the game by MLB Network, it’s hard to get hung up on that. More meaningful is what Tucker’s departure means for the outfield. Seiya Suzuki thrived as a DH, but he now heads back to right field, where the Cubs lost Caissie’s upside to get Cabrera. It remains to be seen if Matt Shaw can/will transition to the outfield.

All told, this is a 92-win team from 2025 that appears to be stabilizing as an annual contender. Of course, whether it can get past the Dodgers in an October scenario might come down to its willingness to continue to flex its big-market muscle and shore up any areas of concern that arise by midseason.

5. Brewers
Yes, I’m putting the Cubs ahead of the Brewers, because the projections tell me they have a higher ceiling. But of course, the projections said the same thing a year ago, and we all know what happened there. Milwaukee wound up with the best record (97-65) in MLB.

Again, though, this isn’t necessarily about picking a division champ. It’s about posing a threat to the Dodgers. The Brewers’ 97-win 2025 season ended abruptly in an NL Championship Series sweep against Los Angeles. It was a tightly contested and well-pitched series, but the concerns about Milwaukee's lack of offensive firepower proved valid.

Milwaukee could and should have a top-tier pitching staff, even without Peralta. The Angel Zerpa acquisition is not to be overlooked, and it will be interesting to see what happens when the Brewers get their accomplished developmental hands on prospect Brandon Sproat, who came over from the Mets.

Unfortunately, though, the Brewers haven’t done anything this offseason to lead you to believe they’ll have more power. Though the continued development of Jackson Chourio and others could lead to that, bringing in a proven bat (Eugenio Suárez, for instance) might boost them on this list.

6. The rest of the West
The Padres, Diamondbacks and Giants are birds of a feather. There is not a projection system in existence that would forecast them to outlast the Dodgers in the NL West standings. (If you find such a system, please report it to an IT department for repair.) But that doesn’t mean they can’t enter the postseason via a Wild Card spot and catch fire when it counts, as the Padres did in 2022 or the D-backs in ’23.

The Padres have come closest to downing the Dodgers in the past two years, but the departures of Dylan Cease and Robert Suárez and injuries to Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish will test their pitching staff considerably. You have to wonder how many rabbits A.J. Preller can pull out of his hat.

The Giants are not to be ignored, despite their uninspiring offseason. Rafael Devers’ arrival mid-2025 did not change that team’s trajectory, but a full season from him and top prospect Bryce Eldridge could have the offensive arrow pointed upward. Low-key pitching acquisitions Adrian Houser and Tyler Mahle deepen the ranks, though they fall well short of the high-impact arms fans longed for at the start of the offseason.

Personally, I think the Snakes would have the best chance at seizing an October opportunity, if they can get there (a big “if” if ever there was one). By that point, Corbin Burnes would presumably be back from Tommy John surgery, so that’s not nothing. The key point, of course, is getting there. Keeping Ketel Marte helps. Losing free-agent starter Zac Gallen would not. The D-backs have underperformed each of the past two years, so they should probably stop doing that.

7. The field
The Dodgers load-managed their way to a division title and the No. 3 seed in last year’s NL playoff field. That meant that they had to play the Wild Card Series round. And that, technically, meant that the richest roster in the history of the sport could have had its season overturned by an 83-win Reds team.

Did it happen? No. Not even close. The Dodgers wiped the floor with the Reds for two days, and that was that. But the vagaries of the game are such that it was at least conceivable for a middling squad that backed its way into October to play well enough in two baseball games to down the defending champs. (I mean, the 2025 Dodgers did go 2-4 against the 91-loss Pirates. It’s a weird sport, folks.)

What I’m saying is don’t totally dismiss whichever team(s) from the remaining field who vie for an October spot. Maybe it’ll be the Reds again. Maybe it’ll be a Marlins team with a lineup loaded with intriguing young trade acquisitions. Probably the best scenario, for the purposes of this conversation, would be those aforementioned Pirates rising up the ranks to the NL’s final seed and the Dodgers again having to play the Wild Card Series -- this time, facing Paul Skenes in one-third of a best-of-three.

Actually, yes, let’s just plan on that. Pirates in three.