Four fatal flaws that doomed the Dodgers’ bid for a historic three-peat

Winter has come early in Los Angeles this year.

There will be no World Series three-peat for the Dodgers this season. No downtown parade to celebrate the continuation of their modern-day dynasty. Not even a return trip to the Fall Classic to try and defend their back-to-back titles.

Instead, despite a 100-win regular season and league-record $432 million payroll, the two-time defending champions were eliminated in the National League Championship Series by the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday, ending their bid for history and sending them into an uncertain offseason –– one that could include an extended lockout, notable changes to the roster, and existential questions about how to retool around their aging veteran core.

Many questions loom about where the Dodgers go from here.

Many unknowns remain about what the sport at large will look like in 2027 –– and when next season, amid what figures to be a protracted labor battle, will even begin.

But for now, the focus will be on why a team with the most talent in the sport, the most October experience on their roster, and the best statistical odds of winning the World Series couldn’t even get back to it.

As a long winter begins, here are the five biggest reasons the 2026 Dodgers came up short.

No-Sho’ Ohtani

On paper, no team in the majors has a better-looking lineup than the Dodgers.

In reality, however, cracks in their offensive production have grown increasingly evident in recent postseasons.

Dating back to the 2024 World Series, the club has batted .219 in postseason play. In five of their seven playoff series in that span, their team average has been .206 or worse.

Even in regular-season play, they have endured extended lulls and repeated second-half slumps. They’re a supremely talented unit, to be sure. But, despite all the big names they boast, they haven’t performed all that different from most other playoff teams, either.

Really, only Shohei Ohtani has been a true separator for them at the plate.

And this October, he was in no condition to help the club compensate for its other shortcomings offensively.

That’s why the team’s mismanagement of Ohtani’s injury saga this year proved so costly. For all his talent on the mound, his greatest importance to the Dodgers has long been as a hitter. And this season, the toll of his attempted return to full-time two-way duties rendered that all-important skill set void.

After all, it was no real surprise that some of the team’s other aging star hitters suffered inconsistent postseason campaigns. That was the case last year. Ohtani’s eight playoff home runs and 1.096 OPS helped them overcome it.

But this fall, the four-time MVP’s right arm and left knee injuries limited his capabilities in the box. Where the Dodgers needed a superstar to spearhead their offense, all they had for most of the month was a physically diminished slap hitter who struggled to even reach base consistently instead.

And even when the old Ohtani finally re-emerged in Game 4 on Thursday, hitting a mammoth home run that gave the Dodgers an early 4-0 lead, it was too little, too late, with Ohtani later coming up short again on a three-pitch strikeout with the tying runner at third and one out in the seventh.

That Ohtani and the team couldn’t better manage his health this season will be the biggest regret from this failed three-peat pursuit.

While he was far from the only slumping bat in their lineup, he was the one who, if fully healthy, could have made the biggest impact.

A mortal rotation

The other way the Dodgers overcame their offensive inconsistencies last year, of course, was through superhuman starting pitching.

In the 2025 playoffs, their rotation posted a 2.68 ERA and while averaging more than six innings per start.

Replicating that kind of production again always felt like an unlikely challenge.

Indeed, this October, even an equally star-studded staff encountered inevitable struggles.

Outside of Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s seven-inning, one-run gem in Game 3 of the NL Division Series, the Dodgers only had one other pitcher get past the sixth inning. And that, of course, was in Game 3 of the NLCS, when Blake Snell gave up back-to-back seventh-inning home runs in a gut-wrenching loss that all but ended the Dodgers’ season.

That didn’t mean the Dodgers’ rotation pitched terribly this postseason. They still finished the playoffs with a 3.89 combined ERA from their starters.

Given the fine margins that came with their lackluster offense, however, that wasn’t nearly good enough.

In the NLCS, the Brewers got to each of their big arms, chasing Tarik Skubal after five innings of two-run ball, knocking out Yamamoto in less than three innings the following day, ambushing Snell for three home runs in Game 3, then erasing their four-run deficit against Glasnow in Game 4.

In the same way Ohtani couldn’t put the team on his shoulders, neither could the rotation.

RISPy business

After every loss this postseason, the Dodgers’ explanations boiled down to the same futile failure.

They generated plenty of chances for themselves. But, as manager Dave Roberts said for the umpteenth time after Game 3, “we’re just not getting those timely hits.”

No stat better epitomized that than the Dodgers’ 5-for-43 mark in these playoffs with runners in scoring position.

Such challenges, of course, aren’t unique to their offense. Entering Thursday, the league-wide batting average with runners in scoring position was .221.

Still, the Dodgers’ output fell far below that mark.

For a team that prided itself on “winning the big moments” each of the past two Octobers, they were repeatedly unable to do so en route to this year’s early exit.

“It’s just one of those points in time where it seems to go that way,” utilityman Kiké Hernández said of the Dodgers’ RISP struggles. “And it just happened to be at the worst time of the season.”

While that might be true — there is an inherent randomness to situational hitting — the issue has also been a recurring problem for the Dodgers recently.

Last postseason, the team hit .204 with runners in scoring position. This year, they ranked seventh in the majors in that category with a .262 but also experienced long stretches in which big hits felt impossible to consistently produce.

Questions about why that was the case will reverberate long into the offseason.

Dino Dodgers

All season, the Dodgers downplayed concerns about having the majors’ oldest lineup. Throughout the playoffs, they embraced their “Dinosaur Dodgers” nickname.

But in the end, it was hard not to feel like the club’s age eventually caught up to it.

Exhibit A: They didn’t hit a home run in the NLCS until Ohtani’s blast in Game 4, lacking the kind of consistent pop that has helped carry them through offensive lulls in previous postseasons.

“I don’t know what you can really say to that,” Freddie Freeman, the second eldest of the bunch at 37 years old, said before Game 4. “That’s just people’s opinions of what that is. We do know we have an older team. That doesn’t mean we’re old and we’re playing bad because we’re old. We’re just not playing that great, in my mind.”

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