The Los Angeles Dodgers will open the 2026 MLB season in a position few teams have ever reached.
After winning back-to-back World Series titles, the Dodgers enter the year with the shortest championship odds since the 2003 New York Yankees, and are looking to claim the first three-peat since the 1998-2000 Yankees last did it.
Sportsbooks have Los Angeles around +230 following their last two seasons and after the offseason additions of top free agents Kyle Tucker and Edwin Diaz to a roster that returned much of its championship-proven core.
Los Angeles has all of Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Mookie Betts among many of their returning players, with manager Dave Roberts leading them from the dugout.
Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images
The Dodgers will try to become the first National League franchise to win three straight World Series titles, with the Yankees (three separate times) and the Oakland Athletics the only other franchises to do it in Major League Baseball history.
Betts made it clear in an interview with Complex ahead of Opening Day that complacency will not be part of the Dodgers' approach. In fact, it will be the “complete opposite.”
“I would say it’s the complete opposite. Literally the complete opposite,” Betts said. “I think we’re more hungry than we were last year, to be honest.”
Betts explained that the opportunity in front of the Dodgers is too rare for the clubhouse to ignore and let it go.
“Because how many times in your life, in your career, do you have history like this in front of you? Rarely, if ever. And so I think we all understand that. We embrace it. We’re not trying to run away from it and say, ‘Oh, no, it’s the same.’ It’s not the same, and we understand that. And we embrace that,” Betts said. “The only way we’re going to be able to achieve history, to achieve a goal like this is to stay hungry, to stay on the attack. We have a group full of guys that understand that. And, actually, we think it’s kind of fun.
“It’s a pleasure, it’s a privilege, to have this kind of history and pressure in front of you. We enjoy it.”
The Dodgers will kick off their season with a three-game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks, with the first game scheduled for Thursday at 8:30 p.m. ET.
