The Los Angeles Dodgers have given their fans plenty to be confident about, but could that be changing?
The 2026 Major League Baseball regular season is in its final week, and across the sport, there are teams who have already punched a ticket to the playoffs, those who are fighting for one and those who know their season is over.
At this juncture, it is worth going back in time to see how optimistic fans of different organizations were heading into the season. During the spring, The Athletic asked fans how optimistic they were about their favorite team in an exercise titled the "Hope-O-Meter."
Now that the season is in its waning days and the contenders around MLB are defined, The Athletic circled back to the optimism 15 fan bases felt during the spring. Soon, the outlet will be releasing results about how optimistic these fan bases are regarding their team’s chances of winning the World Series.
It is no surprise that fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers took the top of the list, but is it that way now?
Overwhelming confidence
Again, it is not surprising that fans of the back-to-back World Series champions came into the season with the highest level of confidence.
Not only did the Dodgers win it all in 2024 and 2025, but they loaded up on more high-level talent in the offseason with the additions of Kyle Tucker and Edwin Diaz. The organization made it clear through its moves that it was trying to three-peat, and that made the fans' optimism poll at 99.8%.
Los Angeles is still in a very good spot. With six games remaining, the Dodgers, who will open their next series at home on Tuesday against the San Diego Padres, are 96-60 and are just two games behind the Milwaukee Brewers for the best record in baseball.
There is a real chance they could reach 100 wins and take the top spot in the sport heading into the playoffs, and that is impressive given the type of injuries and bouts of inconsistency they have dealt with this year. However, it also raises questions.
The acquisitions of Diaz and Tucker have not panned out to be as great as they seemed on paper, and Shohei Ohtani has been plagued by injury troubles for months now, so much so that he has not pitched since July and will not pitch the rest of the season.
With that in mind, combined with the competition the Dodgers will face, will fans be as confident as they were to start the season? Do they still believe they will capture a third straight World Series title, making them just the third organization in MLB history to have those bragging rights?
It will not be easy, and we will see how the fans feel soon enough.
