PECOTA, the popular projection system by Baseball Prospectus, released its estimated win totals for the 2025 season earlier this week. And though you probably won’t be surprised to learn which team sits on top, it’s important to note by how much.

The Los Angeles Dodgers project for a whopping 104 victories in 2025, according to PECOTA, 12 more than the second-place Atlanta Braves. In thousands of simulated seasons, the Dodgers made the playoffs 99.6% of the time. Their chances of winning the World Series — and becoming the first repeat champions in more than 20 years — sit at 21.5%, nearly three times more than anybody else’s. And if you’re waiting for this run of dominance to subside, have some patience — ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel has ranked the Dodgers’ farm system first in the industry heading into the season.

“It’s a great time to be a Dodger,” Mookie Betts said during the team’s annual fan event at Dodger Stadium last weekend, attended by a capacity crowd of 25,000.

It’s also a busy time.

The Dodgers played into late October while defeating the New York Yankees in the 2024 World Series and will begin the season more than a week early, opening up against the Chicago Cubs in Japan on March 18. Their spring training is nigh. Dodgers pitchers and catchers will undergo their physical exams in Glendale, Arizona, on Monday. The first official workout will follow the next morning, at which point throngs of fans, both domestic and international, will crowd the backfields of Camelback Ranch to catch an up-close look at one of the most talented teams in baseball history.

The Dodgers, division champs 11 out of the past 12 years, are about as certain to make the playoffs as any team has ever been. But they face some fascinating questions heading into the start of camp.

Below is a look through the five most compelling.

1. What will Shohei Ohtani‘s return to hitting and pitching look like?

It’s important to remember what Ohtani is setting out to do this season. It’s not merely that he’ll return to being the second two-way star in baseball history — and the first since Babe Ruth, who didn’t juggle pitching and hitting for as long as Ohtani already has. It’s that he will be doing so coming off an entire season spent rehabbing a second repair of his ulnar collateral ligament, and mere months removed from surgery to his non-throwing shoulder after sustaining a torn labrum during the World Series.

At a time when the sport is more specialized, more skilled and more difficult than ever, what Ohtani is attempting is virtually impossible for everybody on the planet except him. Trying to project how his 2025 season will play out, then, seems foolish. And yet Ohtani has defied expectations so often, the sentiment among his teammates is that he will be just as great as he always is.

“I think Shohei’s going to be Shohei,” Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said last weekend. “I just don’t see how he’s not.”

Freeman recalled the World Series workout at Yankee Stadium on the afternoon of Oct. 27. A day earlier, Ohtani had suffered a gruesome left shoulder injury while attempting to steal a base. And yet he was able to reach his ailing arm over his head, which Freeman never recalled someone having the strength to do after popping a shoulder out of place. “How is this man doing this?” Freeman thought.

Ohtani went on to play in the next three games, helping lead the Dodgers to their first full-season championship in four decades. Three weeks later, he won his third unanimous MVP in four years — after the first 50/50 season. Then he began preparing as both a pitcher and a hitter again.

Ohtani is already hitting, and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has seen videos of him producing exit velocities in the triple digits. He has also been playing catch for the better part of two months, but the Dodgers won’t get a true sense for his pitching timeline until spring training begins and bullpen sessions follow.

Ohtani is expected to hit at the start of the season, but in all likelihood he won’t be part of the rotation until May. The Dodgers want him peaking as a pitcher by season’s end and don’t want to have to shut him down at midseason to get him there. So far, Ohtani said Saturday, “things are pretty smooth.” But there’s no telling how this will actually go. This is unprecedented territory, riddled with unique quirks (an example: Ohtani can’t venture out on a rehab assignment to face hitters in April, as any other rehabbing pitcher would, because he’s too valuable to the Dodgers’ lineup).

And yet greatness is expected nonetheless.

“I don’t know about 50/50 because I truly don’t know how he’s going to go about stealing bases while he’s pitching,” Freeman said. “But maybe he steals 50 bases before he starts pitching in May or whenever. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

2. How will Betts handle shortstop?

Yes, the Dodgers are planning on Betts being their every-day shortstop this season. No, there really isn’t any precedent for something like this. Not for a player of this caliber. Not for moving to shortstop, the most demanding position outside of catcher, in the back half of one’s career. But Betts, like Ohtani, is an unprecedented athlete, and the Dodgers have expressed confidence that he can make an incredibly challenging transition if given an entire offseason to work at it.

And Betts sure has worked. He has communicated on a near-daily basis with Chris Woodward, the former Texas Rangers manager and new Dodgers infield coach, at times recruiting him to take ground balls on random fields throughout Los Angeles because Dodger Stadium is undergoing a major renovation. Shortly after the fan event last weekend, he reported to the team’s spring training facility, nearly two weeks before he was scheduled to arrive.

Said Betts: “I feel like I’m just a completely new person over there.”

Betts, a six-time Gold Glove Award winner in right field, has longed to return to his roots in the middle infield basically since he joined the Dodgers. Second base seemed like the natural fit, until Gavin Lux‘s throwing issues last spring prompted a last-minute pivot to shortstop. Betts started 61 games there before a broken wrist kept him out nearly two months and pushed him back to right field upon his return. At season’s end, Betts and the Dodgers sat down and determined he’d make another run at it.

Betts committed nine errors at shortstop last season, though eight were the result of errant throws. Dodgers coaches said he mastered aspects they believe to be the most difficult at the position — getting off the ball, exhibiting range and fielding tough hops. The problem was getting his elite arm to translate from the outfield to the infield, most of which is a matter of footwork and (basically) reps, of which he will now get plenty.

If Betts’ shortstop transition doesn’t go well, the Dodgers can pivot to Tommy Edman, Miguel Rojas or the newly signed Hyeseong Kim, moving Betts to second base. But they’re going to give him every chance to stick at the position, at least in 2025.

“He is very confident about it,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said earlier this offseason. “And I will happily take the side of betting on Mookie and let any fool that wants to take the other side.”

3. How will Roki Sasaki’s transition to MLB work?

Friedman referred to the dynamic with Sasaki, the pitching phenom he’d spent years chasing, as a “partnership.” The Dodgers have pledged to do whatever it takes to help Sasaki achieve his goal of becoming the first Japanese-born pitcher to win a Cy Young Award and, most importantly, stay healthy.

Sasaki, 23, is already an elite pitcher with an exceedingly high ceiling. But evaluators throughout baseball have expressed workload concerns, especially coming off a season in which his fastball exhibited a drop in velocity. Sasaki totaled just 202 innings with the Chiba Lotte Marines over the past two years. He is supremely athletic, but he is also wiry, and he has been throwing in the triple digits since high school. His right arm is special, but it is also vulnerable — a major test for a Dodgers team that has struggled mightily to keep young arms healthy in recent years.

The thought from several scouts during Sasaki’s posting process was that whichever team acquired him would start him late, given he might not throw more than about 150 innings in 2025. But the Dodgers won’t do that. Friedman said during Sasaki’s introductory press conference last month that he would “hit the ground running” in spring training and added that he will begin the season in the rotation if he’s ready, with no designated innings limit.

“Our goal is to start him,” Friedman said. “He’s going to go and start the season and we will continue to work with him in between starts.”

The Dodgers will spend a good portion of spring working with Sasaki to rekindle his four-seam-fastball velocity, part of which will consist of a more thorough examination of how his delivery might have been altered to account for prior injuries. They’ll also begin to tweak his pitch mix in an effort to play up his wipeout splitter, perhaps by helping Sasaki introduce more cutters and two-seamers.

But one of the Dodgers’ biggest tasks will be mapping out a rotation loaded with stars but riddled with injury concerns, including Sasaki, Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow (whose modest 134 innings total in 2024 was the most in his nine-year career), Yoshinobu Yamamoto (who missed three months with a strained rotator cuff last season), Tony Gonsolin (who is coming off Tommy John surgery), Dustin May (who made a combined 26 starts from 2021 to 2024) and Blake Snell (who has thrown less than 160 innings in four of his past five full seasons).

4. They’re done adding players … right?

Snell was the first impact player to join the Dodgers this offseason. He thought they were done adding with every subsequent move — after Michael Conforto, after Teoscar Hernández, after Kim, after Sasaki, after Tanner Scott, after Kirby Yates. At some point, Snell will be right — but perhaps not yet.

A “Kiké!” chant broke out at one point during DodgerFest, and the expectation is the Dodgers will eventually bring back Enrique Hernández, the effervescent, ever-popular super-utility player who has a knack for coming through in October. If they do — and they keep Chris Taylor, who’s in the last year of a four-year, $60 million deal — then only one position player spot will be up for grabs in spring training.

It would seemingly come down to a competition between Kim and two young-but-established outfielders in Andy Pages and James Outman, the winner essentially determining how much time Edman will spend between center field and second base.

At full strength, the rotation might not eventually have room for anybody. Not with Clayton Kershaw also expected back. Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes said Saturday that they’ve been waiting for Kershaw, 36, to get into his throwing program and thus have a better feel for how his body is holding up in the wake of November surgery on his left foot and left knee.

Gomes added that he expects “more conversations at an in-depth level here shortly” with Kershaw. The same can be said about Hernández, though in that case the two sides still have a financial gap to bridge. The timing is worth considering here, too. The Dodgers’ 40-man roster is currently full, and the team doesn’t want to subject anyone on it to waivers. Starting Monday, they can place rehabbing pitchers such as Gavin Stone, River Ryan, Kyle Hurt, Emmet Sheehan and Brusdar Graterol on the 60-day injured list, which opens space on the 40-man roster. Kershaw and Hernández might be added thereafter.

If they are, the roster will feature six MVP Awards, five Cy Youngs, 16 Silver Sluggers, nine Gold Gloves and 45 All-Star appearances.

“Incredible,” Glasnow said. “It’s like ‘The Avengers.'”

5. How will they handle being the villains of MLB?

Betts spoke at DodgerFest last year, near the end of an offseason that saw Ohtani and Yamamoto sign contracts totaling more than $1 billion, and said every game against the 2024 Dodgers would qualify as “the other team’s World Series.” His point was the Dodgers needed to be ready for a season in which basically the entire sport would be aiming for them. He wasn’t wrong.

But what about now?

The Dodgers have since won the World Series and signed practically every player they’ve wanted. Their luxury tax payroll projects to about $380 million, according to Spotrac, roughly $80 million more than the second-place Philadelphia Phillies. The only other teams to even reach $290 million are the New York Mets and Yankees. That doesn’t account for the fact that the Dodgers’ best and most popular player, Ohtani, deferred 97% of his contract. Or that arguably their biggest offseason acquisition, Sasaki, will make the major league minimum this season.

It has all worked to make the Dodgers the proverbial villains of their sport, a reality Roberts believes his team needs to “embrace.”

“Who wouldn’t want to be the focus and do what our organization is doing for the city, the fans?” said Roberts, who is entering the final year of his contract and still looking to sign an extension. “To be quite frank, we draw more than anyone as far as any venue in the world. And so when you’re drawing 4 million fans a year, the way you reciprocate is by investing in players. And that’s what we’ve done.”

Roberts noted that none of the new players the Dodgers brought in have won a championship. Their desire for one, he hopes, will help fuel a team that might otherwise be prone to stagnation. Most of all, it’s the outsized expectations that will help the Dodgers maintain their edge.

Alex Vesia, one of the Dodgers’ primary relievers, believes the heightened pressure will once again bring them closer as a team, a trait that helped them overcome the grind of last October. But that won’t play out until much later, when the games matter and the adversity hits.

At this point, the overwhelming sentiment around the Dodgers is simply gratitude.

“Fans come out here and support us,” Freeman said. “They spend their hard-earned money to come and watch us play. And for them to spend that much money, and for them to see ownership take the product and put it back into the team, it’s awesome. It’s awesome to be a part of that. It’s awesome to be a part of an organization that goes out there, year in and year out, to try and put the best team as possible to go out there and win the championship.”

After calling plays for the nation’s top passing offense in 2024, Syracuse offensive coordinator Jeff Nixon has agreed to a new multiyear contract to stay with the Orange, sources told ESPN on Thursday.

The new deal includes a significant raise that puts him near the top of the ACC in coordinator salary, per sources.

Nixon proved a key hire for first-year Syracuse coach Fran Brown, as transfer quarterback Kyle McCord broke the ACC’s single-season passing record. The Orange went 10-3 and won the Holiday Bowl, the school’s first bowl win since 2018. Syracuse finished with 370 yards passing per game, putting it ahead of Ole Miss and Miami.

Syracuse’s offense finished No. 7 nationally in total offense and No. 8 in third-down conversion percentage. They averaged 34.1 points, which was No. 21 nationally.

Nixon interviewed with the Houston Texans for their offensive coordinator job this season and also interviewed for multiple college head coaching jobs. He’s the former offensive coordinator at Baylor under Matt Rhule and has worked for five different NFL teams.

He came to Syracuse from the New York Giants, where he worked as the running backs coach.

After leading Ohio State to the national title, Buckeyes coach Ryan Day has agreed to a new contract that is set to make him the country’s second-highest-paid head coach.

Ohio State announced in a statement Thursday morning that Day and the school have agreed to a new seven-year deal. The school said that the deal will be valued at “$12.5 million in total annual compensation” (which will be his base salary) for the entire deal.

The contract includes performance bonuses that are the similar to Day’s prior deal, per sources. For example, Day earned a $1 million bonus for Ohio State winning the national title in 2024.

The deal has Day on target to be the country’s second-highest-paid coach behind Georgia‘s Kirby Smart, who made $13.2 million last year including bonuses. Day is one of three active college football coaches to win a national title (Smart and Clemson‘s Dabo Swinney are the others). Swinney is the country’s third-highest-paid coach at $11.1 million.

The Buckeyes won five games over top-five teams in 2024 on the way to the title, a record for a college football team in one season. It marked a remarkable resuscitation after a stunning loss to Michigan to end the regular season, a game in which the Buckeyes were nearly three-touchdown favorites.

Day is 70-10 over his six seasons at Ohio State. His 87.5% winning percentage is the highest in the sport and the third highest in college football history. He has reached the College Football Playoff in four of those seasons and has not lost more than two games in a season.

Day thanked Ohio State president Ted Carter and athletic director Ross Bjork in the statement, adding: “My family and I are incredibly grateful to be a part of the Ohio State community, this football program and Buckeye Nation. I want to thank my assistant coaches and the entire staff for the tireless effort they put in to keep Ohio State positioned as one of the elite programs in the country … on and off the field.

“And I especially want to thank and commend all the young men, and their families, who are a part of this football program. This is a team of tough and determined individuals who drive our culture of respect, commitment and love.”

The contract marks the biggest move in the tenure of athletic director Ross Bjork, who joined the school in January 2024 from Texas A&M.

“Ryan has not only kept Buckeye football as the preeminent program, but he also guides young men into leaders, instilling values that extend far beyond the game,” Bjork said. “Stability at the head coaching position is crucial in today’s evolving college football landscape, and this new contract guarantees continued momentum in recruiting, player development, and overall program success.”