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ESPN’s Jeff Passan isn’t mincing words: the Tarik Skubal trade makes the Dodgers the “overwhelming” favorites to win it all in October, per a report on DodgersBeat. This isn’t just another talking head tossing out a hot take — Passan has been tracking the Skubal situation from the jump, and his assessment carries weight. The deal is done, the dust is settling, and the national consensus is shifting firmly in our direction.

Skubal’s arrival gives us something we haven’t truly had in a long time: a bonafide ace who’s in his prime and pitching like the best in the game right now. He won the American League Cy Young Award in 2024 with the Tigers, posting a 2.39 ERA and 228 strikeouts across 192 innings that season. He followed that up by continuing to dominate in 2025 and into 2026, establishing himself as one of the most consistent and electric arms in baseball. His fastball-slider combination is devastating, and his ability to go deep into games — something our rotation has desperately needed at times — changes the calculus entirely for how we can structure a postseason pitching plan.

What Passan is really getting at is the cumulative effect. This isn’t just about adding Skubal in isolation. Pair him with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who just dominated the Red Sox before the offense let him down, and Shohei Ohtani when he’s right on the mound, and Blake Snell nearing his return from rehab — that’s a rotation that can match up with anyone in a short series. The depth is staggering. We’ve gone from a team with real questions about rotation durability to one where the conversation is about which elite arm sits in the bullpen for a playoff game.

I think Passan’s framing is right, even if it makes me a little nervous to say it out loud. “Overwhelming favorite” is a big label to carry, and we’ve seen what happens when Dodgers teams enter October with those expectations (2019 and 2022 come to mind, for very different reasons). But the talent justifies it. The rotation is now the deepest in baseball, the lineup still has Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman anchoring it, and the bullpen — even with some recent shuffling — has pieces that can hold leads.

The real question now is health. Ohtani’s knee soreness is still something we’re watching, and the bullpen has been a revolving door of IL stints over the past few weeks. But on paper? Passan is saying what a lot of us are thinking: this roster, fully operational, is the clear best team in baseball. The Skubal trade didn’t just fill a hole — it made a statement. Now we go prove it where it matters.

Source(s): Jeff Passan (DodgersBeat) | First reported: August 2, 2026 2:44 PM UTC

God Bless and Go Dodgers