The Los Angeles Dodgers are trying to make history this season by becoming the first organization to three-peat as World Series champions since the 1998-00 New York Yankees over a generation ago, and this may be their most difficult crack at a title yet.

That might be hard to believe for some, given that this team was inches away from losing last year’s World Series on multiple occasions. The 2025 Dodgers ran into an American League buzzsaw in the Toronto Blue Jays, and they barely escaped in a Game 7 that will go down in history as one of the greatest, high-leverage moments in sports.

This season, it is not so much about the opponents Los Angeles is facing — though other teams have been successful in challenging this organization over the course of the year — it is about what is going on internally.

The truth about the Dodgers is that they are getting older, and while their seasoned superstar veterans are needed to win titles, the cracks in the surface are easier to find. This club has dealt with many injuries and ailments this season, with the most pressing ones afflicting Shohei Ohtani.

Ohtani will not pitch the rest of the season due to nagging left knee soreness and a right biceps issue, which leaves Tarik Skubal, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell and Justin Wrobleski to pick up the slack.

The Dodgers are spoiled with talent, and any other team in baseball would love to trot out a Hall-of-Fame-level rotation even after losing their best arm. But Los Angeles might be down another player from that list as well.

In the Dodgers’ 6-2 loss to the Cincinnati Reds on Wednesday, Snell exited after an inning of work due to what Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic reported as left groin tightness.

As Ardaya also wrote, this is an issue that has plagued Snell for years. The 33-year-old, two-time Cy Young Award Winner believes the tightness he felt on Wednesday was more of a scare, but the Dodgers have to be prepared for how this recurring problem might come back to haunt him.

According to the injuries and transactions listed for Los Angeles on MLB.com, Snell is expected to be back possibly in late September. This will not be his first absence, as he already missed more than three months earlier in the season with loose bodies in his left elbow.

Snell’s latest physical hindrance is indicative of what the Dodgers have dealt with all season. This team, for all its star power and regular-season success, is finding it more and more difficult to get to the finish line. 

Key players continue to get banged up, and with each one that goes down for various periods of time, especially as the regular season nears its end, the harder it is going to be in October.