There are no runaway winners, yet, in the 2025 Major League Baseball season. But, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Detroit Tigers are trying. Both are 53-32 with leads of 7.5 and 11.5 games respectively.

How are they doing it? Hitting. The Dodgers lead all of baseball with a .263 team average and Detroit is fourth, just seven points back. Los Angeles has relied on different players to carry the load when the stars struggle. Freddie Freeman was hitting .369 June 3. The slump he’s in caused his average to drop 64 points in 24 days. Fortunately, Max Muncy has been on a tear. He was hitting .176 May 6 and looked lost at the plate. Apparently he was actually unable to focus physically because of astigmatism in his right eye. (As someone who also has astigmatism, I require a prism to be cut into my glasses to draw the “lazy” eye to be able to focus with the other eye). Muncy hit .250 in May and .333 in June. Andy Pages (pronounced PAH hess) has been steadily increasing his production and is now up to .291 with 16 home runs, despite walking just 14 times. Shohei Ohtani has made a couple of pitching starts but has done his damage from the designated hitter spot. He leads the team in hits, but that total could be higher if he ran out every ball. He actually slowed up in a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks portly first baseman, Josh Naylor, to beat him to the bag. Effort is important. Hyeseong Kim gives plenty of that, but is very raw defensively. His offense in 37 games has been rather incredible (.383/.425/.523). Catcher Will Smith (.318 ave/.413/.532) has led the league in batting average with runners in scoring position for the whole year, which helps counter Mookie Betts’ slow start (.249 ave. With nine homers).

The obvious hurdle that has been successfully navigated this year (and during the title run last year) is starting pitching. A team hopes to use five or six…maybe seven…god forbid… eight starters during a year. The Dodgers have used 16 so far, including bullpen games. Speaking of which, the long relievers like Landon Knack, Ben Casparius, and Justin Wrobleski deserve recognition for stretching their innings to meet the needs of the team. Combined, they have an earned run average in their starts around four and a quarter, which is really all you can hope for from a fifth starter.  

The good news for the Dodgers is they have made it work so far and if Dustin May, Clayton Kershaw, Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and some guy named Shohei Ohtani can post six innings a game, they should be able to give relievers a break and be strong going into the postseason. Alex Vesia, Anthony Banda, and Tanner Scott have appeared in almost half of the team’s games so far. 

Mostly the magic has worked but sometimes the blowouts have been horrendous. Utility player Kiké Hernandez has appeared in five games already under the game’s new rules about allowing fielders to pitch in blowouts. 

Forecast: L.A. looks about like they did last year and the team won it all. There’s no reason right now to think they can’t do it again.