Jeff Passan ratchets up the pressure on Dodgers with latest World Series take

Regardless of how the offseason unfolded, it was a safe bet to assume that the Dodgers would enter the 2026 season as the favorites to win the World Series. There wasn't much that was going to change that.

It certainly helps that the Dodgers didn't just sit back on that comfort, but signed the top free agent available in Kyle Tucker, as well as the top closer available in Edwin Díaz. Oh, and Shohei Ohtani is expected to have a full season on the mound.

With a potential reckoning coming next offseason once the current CBA expires, the expectation is that how the Dodgers have operated in recent years could be impacted. Perhaps that was the incentive for signing Tucker, ensuring they have one final season of beating everyone at the game within the rules of the league.

ESPN's Jeff Passan has certainly been one of the loudest voices to take on the "Dodgers are ruining baseball " argument, but even he can't deny the expectations in front of Los Angeles this season. In talking about the Dodgers' World Series chances on SportsCenter, he left very little doubt about their situation.

To paraphrase Passan, there's the rich getting richer, and then there is the Dodgers. The Dodgers already fielded what looked like an All-Star team at nearly every position, and they went out and added Tucker and Diaz.

As Passan notes, even with the assumption that Blake Snell misses Opening Day, the rotation has depth.

Yes, the Dodgers' moves make them the World Series favorites, but the National League has also helped them.

It also works in the Dodgers' favor that the rest of the National League didn't really catch up to them this offseason.

The Chicago Cubs were aggressive with the additions of Edward Cabrera and Alex Bregman, but they still lost a National League Silver Slugger in Tucker. The New York Mets shuffled pieces around, but will be without Francisco Lindor on Opening Day, and they may not have actually upgraded their roster. Ditto for the Milwaukee Brewers; the Philadelphia Phillies and San Diego Padres are running it back with the same respective cores, and we've seen how that story ends for each team.

Yes, the Dodgers' moves have certainly made them the clear favorites to win the World Series, and there's really no other way around that fact. But it's not like the rest of the National League contenders made a strong push to alter that reality.