Let’s Beat the Dodgers!

One of my favorite sports movie tropes is the Scrappy Underdogs Who Discover the Power of Friendship. While there are myriad variations on the theme, the basic template involves a group of lovable losers facing off against some big baddie and initially being humiliated. As the movie goes on, the various underdogs unite against their common foe, and through determination, grit, moxie, and typically some shenanigans, they meet their antagonists again, only on more even footing. Ideally, our ragtag band emerges victorious, but even if they don’t, they’ve at least learned something about themselves and friendship, often earning the grudging respect of their rivals along the way.

The Yankees were once baseball’s Evil Empire, but these days, the Dodgers reign supreme. They’re rich, they’re smart, they play in a ritzy city, and they would definitely look down on the kids at the ramshackle summer camp across the lake. As it has in most recent seasons, ZiPS projects the Dodgers to be the best team in baseball, and the newly-released FanGraphs Playoff Odds agree. But baseball needn’t accept its projected fate. It’s time to fight back! It’s time to unite some scrappy underdogs — at least on a spreadsheet. And so, with a tip of the hat to Tom Tango, whose theoretical inspired me to put together this piece, to the computer!

To construct our ragtag squad, we’ll start with the worst projected team in baseball, the Rockies, and ask ZiPS to build the best 26-man roster it can to square off against the Dodgers in a fictional seven-game World Series. I’m looking for two probability thresholds here: A Fighting Chance (a one-in-three shot of winning the series) and the Hunter Becomes the Hunted (the underdogs pass the 50% mark). If a roster made entirely of Rockies fails to meet these thresholds, then the players from the next-worst projected team will join the pool. We’ll keep repeating the process until our heroes emerge victorious.

I’m setting a few additional rules here. Our Depth Charts have to be project every player I use for at least 30 plate appearances or 10 innings pitched in the role I assign them. After all, as fun as cheating is, you don’t want me to get too experimental and push solid relievers into the rotation, or move guys to harder positions that they’re likely to play in real life.

Starters are all given a higher percentage of playing time than they would be during the regular season — this is the spreadsheet World Series, after all. As for the Dodgers, I’m using something very close to our current Depth Charts, with a Blake Snell/Yoshinobu Yamamoto/Tyler Glasnow/Shohei Ohtani rotation. For our underdogs, I’m starting the second-best starter in Games 1 and 5, the third-best starter in Games 2 and 6, the best starer in Games 3 and 7, and the fourth starter in, naturally, Game 4. With that out of the way, the Rockies are up first!

We’re pretty early in the movie, so naturally, the underdogs are rather overmatched. The Dodgers are at least 70% favorites in every game except for Game 3 in Denver, in which the Rockies just peek over that line with a 32% projected chance of winning. World Series probability: Dodgers 90.5%, Underdogs 9.5%.

Next up, we have the Nationals. The Nats aren’t exactly overflowing with pitching, but they’re still good enough to knock out Kyle Freeland and Chase Dollander in favor of Foster Griffin and Cade Cavalli. There’s also some good, high-upside offensive talent on the Nats, with James Wood, Dylan Crews, CJ Abrams, Luis García Jr., and Harry Ford joining our squad. Wood, Crews, and García instantly get starting jobs, with Ford slotting in as an effective backup catcher. We also have our first big positional battle between Abrams and Ezequiel Tovar. I’d love it if Abrams could play second base, but according to our rules, he isn’t eligible, so Tovar keeps the starting spot with Abrams in reserve. Ryan Ritter holds on to edge out Edouard Julien on the bench:

Well, we haven’t crossed that first threshold yet, but we’re making progress! We’re now up to 16.3% chance of winning our seven-game series. Enter the Los Angeles Angels. We have a stroke of luck, as Mike Trout projects for just enough plate appearances in center field to be able to utilize him out there. Hopefully he can stay healthy for seven games! Zach Neto takes the shortstop job, and with García on the roster, we can afford to carry both Tovar and Abrams for now. The Troy Johnston/Blaine Crim platoon still holds out (barely) over Nolan Schanuel, either by himself or replacing Johnston. Jo Adell bumps Jake McCarthy off the team among the reserves, though Logan O’Hoppe isn’t as fortunate; ZiPS is really suspicious of his 2025 season. The Angels may have a mediocre rotation, but José Soriano, Grayson Rodriguez, Reid Detmers, and Yusei Kikuchi clean the board. There’s not as much in the way of bullpen help, but a healthy Ben Joyce and Drew Pomeranz strengthen our relief corps:

We don’t get a huge bump here, as the Angels have more middling players than real stars, but we’re over 20% now, albeit barely — 20.9%. There’s one more team projected for fewer than 70 wins: the Chicago White Sox. With the Pale Hose in the fold, two more Rockies hit the unemployment line, with Munetaka Murakami taking over at first base while Miguel Vargas mans third. Vargas has a rather meh projection, but our situation at the hot corner isn’t especially great, so he gets into the lineup as well. Kyle Teel can’t supplant Hunter Goodman, but he still gets a roster spot over Ford. Crim remains as a reserve thanks to having the platoon advantage over Johnston.

In the rotation, Shane Smith pushes out Kikuchi, while four White Sox relievers join the ‘pen, which loses its final Rockie:

We aren’t up to 33% yet, but at 26.4%, we’re inching closer and closer. And we’re finally a better than .500 team! What’s more, we now get the opportunity to pillage some high-end Pirates talent. Konnor Griffin and Oneil Cruz have stiff competition at their positions, ending up as reserves, but Brandon Lowe is an upgrade at second and Spencer Horwitz projects as marginally more helpful than Mickey Moniak. Unsurprisingly, where the Pirates really help is in the rotation, with Paul Skenes, Braxton Ashcraft, and Bubba Chandler grabbing the top three spots, with Mitch Keller just missing. And while it isn’t as flashy, the Bucs have filled out the ‘pen enough that our relievers are a low-key but very high quality group:

With the Pirates in the fold, we have officially passed the first threshold! This team would now project as the best squad in the NL Central, and boasts a 37% chance of taking down the full-strength Dodgers. I think we’re at Rocky levels! The Dodgers still have some really high-end talent in their lineup, but our team gets some serious reinforcement from the Las Vegas Athletics of Sacramento. Brent Rooker, Jeff McNeil, Lawrence Butler, Nick Kurtz, and Shea Langeliers all make the starting lineup, our biggest offensive boost so far. Jacob Wilson also makes the roster, though he still projects slightly behind Neto. The Rockies face oblivion, with only Goodman remaining. The A’s are quite a bit less helpful on the pitching side, with only Brady Basso joining the team as the last pitcher out of the bullpen:

We’re tantalizingly close now, with a 46.6% chance of vanquishing our foes; we’re even favored in two of the seven possible games (the Skenes starts). Will the Rays put us over the top? Well, we finally get the upgrade we need at third base, with Junior Caminero easily booting Vargas, and Yandy Díaz projecting better than Murakami. Still, upgrading this lineup is becoming increasingly hard, thanks to the A’s who joined. We now have a killer Skenes-Shane McClanahan–Drew Rasmussen front three, with Ashcraft remaining as our fourth starter. Griffin Jax becomes the closer, and Steven Matz pairs with Hunter Barco as our resident southpaws:

With our most recent additions, our illegally assembled team is projected as having a 57.2% chance of beating the Dodgers in the spreadsheet World Series. And it only took the best talent from the seven worst-projected teams in baseball to do it! This probably overstates just how bad at least some of the lesser teams in the majors are; a squad made up of just Athletics and Pirates would be pretty effective on its own, even against the mighty Dodgers. By the time we finished our challenge, the roster was extremely short of Rockies, Nationals, and White Sox, which should be a lesson that a team that wins 70-something games likely possesses far more top-end talent than a teams approaching 100 losses. We could go farther, and invite the best of the Marlins, Cardinals, and Twins to help us really bully the Dodgers, but if we’re going to do a full heel turn, we ought to wait for the sequel. In the meantime, perhaps the league’s cellar-dwellers can contemplate how they might go from underdog to contender.