Congratulations to the Los Angeles Dodgers, who converted their $350 million payroll into their World Series championship in the last six seasons.
This column will be about how the Dodgers became the first MLB team to use an NBA-style approach to roster management.
Or, more accurately, “load management.” You know, giving players plenty of rest during the regular season to make sure their best guys were fresh and fueled up for the postseason.
Some NBA teams overdid this, of course. But generally speaking the system has been effective. The Dodgers implemented something similar this season, and I’ll get to that in a while.
First, I believe it’s only proper to praise the Dodgers. There’s more to this than the World Series rings, which are the ultimate prize in the sport. But the Dodgers long-term success should be respected, no matter what the size of their payroll endowment.
The generously funded Dodgers have competed in every MLB postseason since returning to the playoffs in 2013 after a three-year absence.
During their run of 13 consecutive years on the October stage, the Dodgers have won the most postseason games, 77, which is 15 more than Houston, the next team on the list.
And how wide is the gap between the Dodgers and the other 14 National League teams?
Here are the top five regular-season winning percentages by a National League team since the start of the 2013 season. I’ll include how many games over .500 each team has been since ‘13…
1. Dodgers, .609 … +439 over.
2. Cardinals, .539 … +158 over.
3. Braves, .530 … +122 over.
4. Brewers, .529 … +115 over.
5. Cubs, .522 … +90 over.
OK, now here are the most postseason victories by an NL club since 2013: Dodgers 77, Braves 25, Cubs 21, Phillies 21, Cardinals 18.
Yes, the Dodgers have in fact won a preposterous 52 more postseason games than the No. 2 NL team on the list.
Have the Dodgers ruined baseball? Of course not. And I’m going to make a shift here in a bit and take this column in the direction I alluded to.
But if more money means more World Series rings, then I wonder why the New York Mets don’t have an NL pennant to show for owner Steve Cohen’s total payroll investment of $1.48 billion over the last five seasons?
Why haven’t the Yankees won a World Series over the last five years despite paying players $1.36 billion? Yes, the Yanks won the AL pennant in 2024 … but so what? The Steinbrenners have spent more than any club in the majors over several decades but hasn't won a World Series since 2009. And that’s the Bombers’ only World Series conquest during the last 25 seasons.
The Phillies have poured $1.2 billion into payroll over the last five campaigns and won a pennant but no World Series rings. The Padres: $1.06 billion in payroll over the last five years. No pennants.
Closer to home, the Cubs have rolled up $930 million in payroll costs since the start of 2021 and have failed to make the playoffs in four of the five seasons. And when the North Siders made the postseason this year, they were bounced from the NLDS by the Brewers – a team that has invested $600 million in payroll over the last five seasons … or $330 million less than Chicago.
Now, let’s get into what I wanted to get into …
The Dodgers also have put together a modern dynasty with the substantial impact of their enormous, seemingly bottomless, financial war chest.
This franchise also wins big because their front office is smarter, more innovative, more skilled at evaluating talent – and always focusing on ways to find an advantage.
The massive payroll helps. No question. That’s an understatement. In normal times, the Dodgers’ payroll largesse provides more roster depth than most teams can hope for.
The Dodgers not only allocate vast sums of money on elite players – but their front office makes sure to focus on padding the overall 40-man roster with insurance.
The 2025 champions just gave us an example of how they’re more than just big spenders. They’re also big thinkers. Deep thinkers. They don’t just assemble a roster; the Dodgers sculpt it.
Los Angeles spent a fortune on funding the top four starters in their rotation: Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani.
Including salary deferments – which, after all, will go to the pitchers eventually – the Dodgers financed the most expensive rotation in MLB history.
Ohtani: 10 years, $700 million.
Yamamoto: 12 years, $325 million.
Snell: 5 years, $182 million.
Glasnow: 5 years, $136.5 million.
That comes to nearly $1.35 billion.
For only four starters!
But the Dodgers also had an exorbitant, high-end rotation in 2024. Problem is, it splintered apart. Injuries, injuries, injuries. By the time the ‘24 postseason opened, the Dodgers had to piece together a limited rotation, leaning heavily on Jack Flaherty (7.36 October ERA), Walker Buehler and Yamamoto. And Yamamoto wasn’t nearly as good in his first MLB season (in ‘24) as he performed in 2025.
To compensate for the severe shortage of starting pitching for the 2024 tournament, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts flooded the zone with relievers. In capturing the ‘24 World Series title, Roberts used his starting pitchers for 60 innings … and his relievers for 82 innings. It worked; the bullpen was money.
The Dodgers weren’t about to leave themselves vulnerable for a second consecutive postseason.
This is where the load management comes in. This is where the ridiculously thick roster depth kicks in.
In terms of availability and workload, Yamamoto was LA’s only traditional starting pitcher this season. He made 30 starts and worked 173 and ⅔ innings during the regular season.
And in his final MLB season, Clayton Kershaw, when healthy, was spotted into the rotation for 22 starts and 112 and ⅔ innings. Kershaw had limited stuff but pitched well. But as the postseason approached, the Dodgers planned to go with a four-man rotation.
It didn’t include Kershaw, who would be used out of the bullpen if necessary. The inconsistent Dustin May pitched 104 innings as a starter, was hammered for a 4.85 ERA, and the Dodgers offloaded him to the Red Sox at the July 31 deadline.
Glasnow pitched 90 and ⅓ innings during the regular season.
Snell had left-shoulder “inflammation” early in the season and the Dodgers gave him plenty of time to heal up. (Part of the load-management plan?) Ohtani, recovering from his second elbow surgery, didn’t make his first start until June 16 and pitched just 47 regular-season innings.
Ohtanti, Snell and Glasnow combined to average only 66 regular-season innings for the Dodgers. That’s some quality load management there.
Meanwhile, another free-agent signing from Japan – the young Roki Sasaki – had an early right-shoulder “impingement,” was shut down for months, and gave the Dodgers only 36 and ⅓ innings during the regular season.
That caution allowed Roberts to repurpose Sasaki as a high-leverage reliever for the postseason. And he was very good until some fatigue set in.
At one point early in the season (May) the Dodgers had 13 pitchers on the injured list. At that time they had 32 pitchers under control – either on the active roster, on a minor league option, on the injured list, or on two-way status (Ohtani.) In time, that list would grow even more.
As the excellent Los Angeles Times baseball columnist Bill Shakin wrote early in the 2025 season:
“They do not try to find five starting pitchers and ride them all season. They do try to end up with five healthy and effective starters for the postseason, and they try to maximize their chances to do that by collecting as many pitchers as they can, with the support of an ownership group willing to pay players to rehabilitate.”
And there you have it.
Load management …
Backed by a load of payroll dollars.
Without ownership agreeing to pay the extra cost to give the Dodgers an enormous pool of pitchers, load management would only be a theory instead of a well executed plan.
The Dodgers have been trying to implement a load-management system for more than 10 years.
Since the start of 2015, only three Dodgers starters have worked 100 innings in a season: Gavin Stone (140) and Glasnow (134) last season, and Yamamoto this year.
But unlike the past years, when the Dodgers didn’t have the depth to go fully into a load-management pitching mode, they made sure to have enough arms to get it done in 2025.
By the and of game No. 162, the Dodgers had used 40 pitchers.
Yes, 40!
Here’s the number of pitchers used during the regular season by the other five NL teams that made the postseason: Brewers 33, Cubs 33, Phillies 28, Padres 28, Reds 28.
What about the six American League postseason teams? The Blue Jays used 38 pitchers in the regular season, the most by a playoff-bound AL club. The Blue Jays also ranked 5th in the majors in payroll this year, so … yeah, money can cover some holes. But money isn't everything. Knowing how to toggle all of these pitchers to get max value out of them isn't an easy. The chaos can overwhelm.
(In case you were wondering, the Cardinals used only 24 pitchers. No, manager Oli Marmol wasn’t at a disadvantage or anything like that, because --- sarcasm alert! -- all MLB managers work their way through 162 games with a comically skeletal roster. Right?)
The Dodgers have some aging position players. Their regular hitters aged 33 or older – Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Max Muncy, Teoscar Hernandez and Enrique Hernandez – were running low on petrol as the World Series went on. That group of five had their big moments in the fall classic, but collectively batted .195 with a 28 percent strikeout rate over the seven-game drama. And don’t forget, this lineup core has competed in 33 postseason games over the last two seasons.
The miles build up. But the Dodgers prioritized pitching as the No. 1 area requiring protection.
“So much of our focus is on pitching,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman told the LA Times during the season. “And, after a long season, what the offseason program looks like, what the ramp-up looks like, what the season looks like. I don’t worry about it that much on the position player front.”
In the World Series, the Los Angeles offense averaged only 2.36 runs per game, batted .203, posted a substandard OPS, and performed 19 percent below average offensively per wRC+.
But the Dodger hitters came through with timely hits, and the starting pitchers took care of the rest. Yamamoto was sensational, delivering six innings of one-run pitching in his Game 6 start, then returning for 2 and ⅔ innings of season-saving relief in Game 7.
Earlier in the series, Yamamoto threw a complete game for a victory in Game 2, volunteered his services and warmed up to pitch a potential 19th inning in Game 3. So that means he warmed up in four of the seven World Series games after working through a full regular season.
Even then, 27 MLB starters worked more innings than Yamamoto during the regular season. And late in the schedule, Yamamoto threw fewer than 100 pitches in six of his final eight starts. He had enough in reserve, including the final World Series game played on Nov. 1.
Including his relief efforts, Yamamoto went 5-1, crafted a 1.45 ERA and handled the most postseason innings (37 and ⅓) since the Giants’ Madison Bumgarner (52 and ⅔) in 2014.
In the final two games – and needing to win both – the Dodgers turned to their starting pitchers to cover 15 and ⅔ innings of the 18 innings played on Friday-Saturday. That’s 87 percent of the innings.
Who does that? Well, the Dodgers. The load management paid off. The Dodgers embrace being bold and different when it makes sense. They come up with creative ideas that make other teams flinch.
This NBA approach was the latest example. The Dodgers were able to get through the regular-season grind by treating it like a gradual, almost casual, ramping up to what really mattered: the postseason. And the payroll provided the resources for the depth that made the plan feasible.
The Dodgers went into October as a stronger version of their regular-season selves. Not a perfect version by any means. But this time, LA made sure to pack enough fresh starting pitching to last through their 17-game journey through four postseason rounds. And that was exactly the plan.
Thanks for reading …
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015. Bernie covered every Cardinals postseason game from 1996 through 2014.
You can access his opinionated columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STLSportsCentral, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. And please check out the weekly “reunion” segments here at STLSportsCentral featuring Bernie and Randy Karraker.