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Sizing up the NL West: What are the biggest strengths and weaknesses of the Dodgers, Padres, Giants and D-backs?

It’s just two games, but the pair of contests between the Padres and Giants this week in San Diego represent the earliest intradivision clash in what projects to be one of the most compelling storylines of the 2025 season: the battle for the NL West.

This is a division that featured the four best records in MLB three weeks into the season, an astonishing reality even considering the modest early sample. That fun fact is no longer intact, as the D-backs have slipped back toward .500, but the Snakes — NL champs in 2023 and winners of 89 games last year — are still clearly a team to take seriously. With Arizona, the defending World Series champion Dodgers, a wildly talented Padres club and a seemingly rejuvenated Giants franchise, it’s rare to see this much firepower in one division.

And with these four teams all vying for spots in the postseason, each divisional game carries more weight. At the same time, the introduction of the balanced schedule in 2023 means there are fewer opportunities in the regular season for these rivals to prove themselves against one another; these days, teams play 13 games against each of their divisional opponents instead of the former 19. This year, there were barely any intradivision NL West games in the first month of the season. Sure, the Dodgers and Padres have already collected three wins apiece against the potentially historically horrible Rockies — and racking up wins against Colorado will be crucial for all four squads as they look to keep pace — but otherwise, nearly all of the matchups among these playoff hopefuls are still in front of us.

Consider this week’s brief soirée between San Diego and San Francisco an appetizer for what promises to be a full menu of high-stakes games as the summer unfolds. The first month has given us plenty of reason to be optimistic about these four NL West contenders. But no team is perfect, and we’ve already seen cracks in each club’s armor that could prove to be their undoing over the long haul.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at why each team is so good and why they might have reason to worry.

Los Angeles Dodgers

Why they’re so good: Unmatched lineup depth

It turns out having a trio of future Hall of Famers atop your lineup is a solid strategy. Yet it hasn’t just been three MVPs doing all the heavy lifting offensively in the early going. Tommy Edman continues to excel in his first full year in Dodger blue, and 24-year-old center fielder Andy Pages — the only position player on the roster under the age of 30 — has been the team’s hottest hitter for several weeks.

When players such as Edman and Pages are raking in support of the expected production from the higher-profile stars such as Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith and Teoscar Hernandez, it becomes far easier to not worry about Max Muncy having one home run or Michael Conforto having a .574 OPS or Mookie Betts slugging only .385. With this much talent crammed into the lineup, the Dodgers can more than compensate for whoever happens to be enduring a slump. That’s their superpower as currently constructed.

Why they should worry: Can they survive all the pitching injuries for the second consecutive year?

Here we go again. Yes, we just watched the Dodgers win the World Series after navigating an unprecedented wave of injuries on the mound, but it’s worth recalling that most of those major injuries didn’t occur until later in the season. Yoshinobu Yamamoto didn’t hit the IL until mid-June. Tyler Glasnow was healthy and awesome until his elbow started barking in August. Gavin Stone gave the team 25 stellar starts before his season-ending shoulder surgery in September.

This year, we’re barely one month in, and multiple key arms have already hit the shelf, with both Glasnow and marquee free-agent addition Blake Snell dealing with shoulder issues. It was fun to fantasize in the offseason about how loaded the rotation looked on paper, with Snell and the mega-talented Roki Sasaki joining Glasnow and Yamamoto in advance of Ohtani’s return to the mound (not to mention rehabbing franchise legend Clayton Kershaw), but these early injuries have quickly raised the question of when and whether this hypothetical super rotation will actually come to be.

With Glasnow’s and Snell’s status uncertain and Ohtani nowhere close to returning, there is substantial pressure on Sasaki and Yamamoto to not just perform at a high level but also sustain a sizable workload, even though neither has proven capable of doing so in recent seasons. Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin must do the same, despite having come back from significant surgeries, and Kershaw’s return — which didn’t seem like an urgent matter a few weeks ago — now feels considerably more crucial. The spotlight also burns brighter on the depth looming in Triple-A, guys such as Bobby Miller, Justin Wrobleski and Landon Knack.

President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman explained over the winter that the purpose of acquiring all this pitching talent was to avoid having to go shopping for expensive pitching at the trade deadline, but at this point, it’s difficult to imagine L.A. not having to make a deal for an arm or two come July.

San Diego Padres

Why they’re so good: Elite top talent

The top half of this Padres roster is as good as any team’s across the league. San Diego boasts two of the best all-around outfielders in the sport in Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill, two ultra-productive veteran hitters in Manny Machado and Luis Arraez, three starters with swing-and-miss stuff in Dylan Cease, Michael King and Nick Pivetta, and a super-stacked bullpen headlined by an elite closer in Robert Suarez.

When all of these top players are healthy and performing at their best, this is an exceptionally difficult roster to navigate on both sides of the ball. Containing the Padres’ offense is a chore, and scoring runs against their pitching staff is a challenge.

Why they should worry: Can a roster this top-heavy succeed over 162 games and beyond?

The problem with San Diego — one that started to be exposed recently with injuries to Merrill, Arraez and Jake Cronenworth — is a severe lack of competent depth beyond the superstars. Unlike the Dodgers or D-backs or even the Giants on the pitching side, this is simply not a team with a wealth of big-league-quality options waiting in the wings in Triple-A. The series of blockbuster trades executed by president of baseball operations AJ Preller has left the upper levels of the San Diego farm system relatively barren, with the bulk of the top prospects occupying the lower rungs of the minors, too far away to help in 2025.

All those swaps combined with heavy investment in the current stars has also left minimal financial flexibility to address the bottom of the roster, which has led the Padres to lean on an unusually large number of fringe veterans as regular contributors: guys such as Jose Iglesias, Tyler Wade, Martin Maldonado, Jason Heyward, Gavin Sheets and Connor Joe. Some of these free-agent signings have gone better than others, but the broad result is the Padres too often rolling out lineups in which the bottom half is extremely exploitable.

A similar dynamic is taking place on the mound in the wake of injuries to Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove, as there aren’t any viable alternatives lurking in the minors to replace the struggling Randy Vasquez and Kyle Hart. It’s possible that the high-end talent on this roster, if healthy, will be good enough to overcome the lack of depth in the long run, but this precarious style of roster construction makes each current injury — and any future ones — especially ominous for these Padres.

San Francisco Giants

Why they’re so good: Clutch hitting and a standout bullpen

The Giants have combined an excellent bullpen with enough timely hitting to rack up a ton of wins in April, with a remarkable five of their nine home victories coming in walk-off fashion. The spectacular breakout of center fielder Jung Hoo Lee has elevated San Francisco on both sides of the ball, giving the Giants another core position player to build around, alongside Matt Chapman and Willy Adames in the infield.

On the mound, Logan Webb continues to gobble up innings as efficiently as any starter in the NL, and an impressive variety of relievers — from hard-throwers in Camilo Doval and Randy Rodriguez to the funky deliveries of Ryan Walker and Tyler Rogers — have kept opposing bats off-balance in the late innings while the offense has consistently come up with a big hit when required.

Why they should worry: Is this offense actually good?

The Giants certainly still have some questions to answer on the mound beyond Webb, but I’m more focused on the lineup’s long-term viability. While Lee’s ascension has been both incredibly encouraging and wonderfully entertaining, it’s also one of the only promising starts to the year among San Francisco’s bats. Adames has been disappointing thus far, struggling to adjust to the hitter-unfriendly confines of Oracle Park. Heliot Ramos hasn’t homered since the first week of the season. Matt Chapman is drawing a ton of walks but hitting a career-low .206. Wilmer Flores has driven in a bunch of runs (28!), but nothing about his batted-ball data suggests he is suddenly a star-level slugger enjoying a late-career breakout.

And while the Giants rank in the middle of the pack in terms of wRC+ and runs per game, several underlying metrics suggest a far less potent offense: This team ranks 29th in hard-hit rate and 26th in xwOBA. Maybe San Francisco can continue to survive with sensationally precise sequencing that results in a steady stream of well-timed rallies and late-inning comebacks, but I’d feel a lot better about this group’s chances of contending if the lineup can demonstrate a more sustainable flavor of production.

Arizona Diamondbacks

Why they’re so good: An unstoppable offense

The D-backs led MLB in runs per game last year, but Christian Walker and Joc Pederson were massive contributors to that. With both gone in free agency, it felt reasonable to expect the Snakes’ lineup to take some kind of step back in 2025. Instead, the D-backs have barely skipped a beat and are once again one of the most formidable offenses in MLB.

Trade acquisition Josh Naylor has replaced Walker’s production brilliantly and continues to mash at an All-Star level. Pavin Smith has emerged as a legitimate force against right-handed pitching just as Pederson was a year ago. Corbin Carroll looks better than ever, which is quite the statement considering the exceptional standard he set in his first two big-league seasons. Fresh off signing a long-term extension in spring training, shortstop Geraldo Perdomo is having his best offensive season yet. Eugenio Suarez is tied for the league lead in homers with 10.

And perhaps most impressive of all, this Snakes offense has stayed humming even with Ketel Marte having played only eight games due to a hamstring strain that still has him on the shelf. All of which is to say: Arizona’s calling card remains its fantastic position-player group, which should keep this team competitive all season.

Why they should worry: How much do we trust this pitching staff?

When the D-backs surprisingly scooped up Corbin Burnes in free agency, it looked like they had acquired an ace to top what already looked to be a fairly formidable rotation. But that has not been the case thus far, with only 26-year-old Brandon Pfaadt performing at or above expectations, while Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, Eduardo Rodriguez and even Burnes have appeared frighteningly hittable in April.

It might be easy to overlook the disappointing rotation when the offense is scoring boatloads of runs and the new-look bullpen, featuring AJ Puk, fireballer Justin Martinez and a resurgent Shelby Miller, is handling high-leverage situations with aplomb. But now Puk is on the IL, which raises the stakes for Martinez and Miller to continue delivering at an elite level, especially if the starters scuffle.

For as good as this lineup appears to be, we watched this same recipe of high-octane offense plus shaky run prevention fall just short in 2024. And in this tremendously competitive division, there’s even less margin for error for such a combo to work in 2025.

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