NL West Teams Are Getting Punished By Bad Luck

To the great credit of the National League West, four of the five teams in the division are actively trying to win. Everyone knows the Los Angeles Dodgers have spent a small, or large, fortune, to try and repeat as World Series Champions.

The San Diego Padres were one win away from the NLCS in 2024, after reaching that round in the 2022 postseason. In Phoenix, the Arizona Diamondbacks signed Corbin Burnes in the offseason, pairing him with Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly and Eduardo Rodriguez to form one of the best rotations in baseball. Along with Corbin Carroll and Ketel Marte leading the offense.

Even the San Francisco Giants have entered a new era under GM Buster Posey. Willy Adames joined in the offseason, Jung Hoo Lee is back from injury, and Matt Chapman and Heliot Ramos provide quality and depth.

Then there's the Rockies, but hey, no division's perfect.

Still, everywhere you look, there's talent, star players, and dominant pitching. And through the first few weeks of the season, that's exactly how it's played out: there's the NL West, then there's everybody else.

LOS ANGELES - Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers watches his game-winning walk-off home run off relief pitcher Raisel Iglesias of the Atlanta Braves in the ninth inning as the Dodgers defeated the Braves 6-5 to win a baseball game at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Wednesday, April 2, 2025.(Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)

MLB Division Configuration Hurting NL West Teams

As of Saturday afternoon, the Dodgers lead at 8-1, followed closely by the Padres at 7-1. The Giants are off to a hot start too at 6-1. Arizona's in a distant fourth at 5-3, making those four teams a whopping 26-6. AL Central teams? They're 14-23. 

Arizona would be in first place in either the NL or AL Central divisions. They're fourth in the West. 

Four of the five NL West teams rank in the top nine of Major League Baseball's highest payrolls. Spending money doesn't guarantee a title, but as we're seeing through the early part of 2025, it's a great way to start.

The Central teams, including the big-market Chicago Cubs, simply don't spend a high percentage of their revenue on payroll. 

READ: MLB Has A Spending Problem, And It's Not What You Think

NL West teams though, are trying to win. And it's creating a bottleneck, where they'll beat up on each other throughout the season. This also has massive postseason ramifications: there are three wild card teams in each league that get to October baseball. Could all three of the NL wild card teams come out of the same division? 

The Mets, Braves and Phillies will have something to say about it, surely. But the division alignment means that the West teams could wind up being the best in the league. All stacked up together.