MLB.com take couldn't be more off the mark when comparing Dodgers and Mets offseasons

The Los Angeles Dodgers haven't added the most players of any team in baseball this offseason, but their eight signings have all been massive additions or re-additions to every part of the roster.

Teoscar Hernández and Blake Treinen reclaimed their spots from 2024, but Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki, Tanner Scott, Hyeseong Kim, Kirby Yates, and Michael Conforto marked improvements across the board, and all but Conforto will be sticking around for multiple years.

It's been enough to send the rest of the league reeling. Even when the Dodgers signed Kim, a light-hitting KBO utilityman who wasn't really on anyone's radar, opposing fans found a way to complain about it as if they'd desperately wanted Kim for their own teams all along.

If the Dodgers didn't already look primed to win another trophy the second they received the one from 2024, they certainly do now.

However, Mike Petriello of MLB.com argued that the Dodgers were not the most improved team of the winter, rather the Mets, whose 12 signed or re-signed players (at the time, before they re-signed Pete Alonso) this offseason represent a projected 8.8 added fWAR to the Dodgers' 7.5.

Mike Petriello of MLB.com made a WAR-based argument that Mets, not Dodgers, are baseball's most-improved team

How seriously you take this argument will probably depend on how much stock you put into WAR as a stat, and it's a divisive one. For simplicity's sake, let's just go along with it. Petriello also argued something along the lines of "how can the Dodgers be the most improved when they were already so good to begin with?" — which, sure, that's fair, but it's also kind of a backhanded compliment for the Mets.

Projections are just projections and the season is too long to put too much stock into them, but we can concede that yes, by projected fWAR, the Mets' 12 additions pre-Alonso mark more improvement to their still imperfect roster than the Dodgers' eight to their already mostly complete roster. However, the Dodgers also remain at the top of FanGraphs' leaderboards in terms of total projected WAR, over four points higher than the second-place Braves and exactly 8.8 higher than the sixth-place Mets.

So, fine — we'll let the Mets run away with the title of most improved this offseason. The Dodgers don't really need the consolation prize of that title. Petriello said it himself: the Dodgers were already good, and the Mets had to sign 12 — now 13 — guys just to make up some of the difference.