The Best Los Angeles Dodgers Seasons and Every October Run
The Dodgers' best seasons by record and every postseason series, from Brooklyn's near-misses against the Yankees through nine World Series titles, including the back-to-back championships of 2024 and 2025.
No club in the National League has played in more World Series than the Dodgers. The historical record credits the franchise with 27 pennants since it joined the major leagues in 1884, and nine of those ended in a championship: 1955, 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988, 2020, 2024 and 2025. The other World Series trips, fifteen losses and one drawn series by the sheet, are as much a part of the identity as the titles. For long stretches the story was Brooklyn losing to the Yankees. For another long stretch it was Los Angeles winning 100 games and losing in October.
This guide ranks the best regular seasons by winning percentage, then goes through the club's postseason in order, era by era. Every record below comes from the historical through the 2025 season: 11,525 wins and 10,137 losses over 142 seasons, a .532 winning percentage, with 23 division titles and three wild-card berths. The 2025 team also set the franchise attendance record, 4,012,470 at Dodger Stadium.
The most useful way to read the history is as four distinct clubs sharing one name: the Brooklyn teams of the 1940s and 1950s, the pitching-and-defense clubs of the 1960s, the long run from 1974 to 1988, and the modern club that has made the playoffs every year since 2013.
The best seasons by record
The historical record ranks the club's best seasons of at least 100 games by winning percentage. The list is a mix of eras, and only some of the teams on it won the title.
| Season | Record | Finish | Postseason |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 111-51 | 1st in NL West | Lost NLDS to San Diego, 1-3 |
| 1899 | 101-47 | 1st, pennant | No World Series was played |
| 1953 | 105-49 | 1st, pennant | Lost World Series to the Yankees, 2-4 |
| 1889 | 93-44 | 1st, pennant | Lost World Series to the Giants, 3-6 |
| 1942 | 104-50 | 2nd | Did not qualify |
| 1890 | 86-43 | 1st, pennant | World Series tied, 3-3 |
The headline fact is that the best record in the history of the franchise, 111-51 in 2022, ended in a division series loss to a Padres team that had finished behind it in the division. The 1953 team won 105 games and lost to the Yankees. The 1942 team won 104 games and finished second, which in the era before divisions or wild cards meant going home at the end of September. None of the six best seasons by record ended in a World Series title. The title teams were never the winningest ones.
The other end of the record book is far from the Hollywood image. The 1905 club went 48-104, and the 1908, 1909, 1904 and 1898 teams all lost 91 or more games. All five came before 1910, and none of the worst five seasons by record belongs to the Los Angeles era.
Brooklyn before the World Series habit (1884 to 1920)
The franchise began in 1884 as the Brooklyn Atlantics, then spent decades under a succession of names: Grays, Bridegrooms, Grooms, Superbas, Dodgers, Robins. It joined the National League in 1890 after winning the 1889 American Association pennant. The 1889 club went 93-44 and lost the postseason matchup with the New York Giants, three games to six. The next year, in the National League, the club won the pennant again at 86-43 and played Louisville to a 3-3 tie, a series that the historical record does not count as a title.
The 1899 team was the best of the early clubs. It went 101-47, still the second-best winning percentage the franchise has recorded by the sheet's ranking, and won the pennant. It repeated in 1900. The historical record shows no postseason series for either year, so the pennant was the whole prize.
When the modern World Series arrived, Brooklyn's first two appearances were losses. The 1916 Robins, managed by Wilbert Robinson, lost to Boston four games to one. The 1920 team lost to Cleveland five games to two, in the best-of-nine format used for a few years around that time. Robinson ran the club for 18 seasons (1375-1341 in 2,736 games), the third-most games of any Dodgers manager behind Walter Alston and Tom Lasorda.
The Yankee years: 1941 to 1956
For fifteen seasons Brooklyn was one of the best teams in baseball, and the New York Yankees were often better in October. The sheet records the full list of meetings:
- 1941: lost to the Yankees, 1-4.
- 1947: lost, 3-4.
- 1949: lost, 1-4.
- 1952: lost, 3-4.
- 1953: lost, 2-4.
- 1955: won, 4-3.
- 1956: lost, 3-4.
Three of those losses went to seven games. The 1947 series was played in the year Jackie Robinson broke the major-league color line with Brooklyn and won the first Rookie of the Year award, and every Series from then through 1956 came with Robinson on the roster. The Brooklyn lineup of the era was among the best in the history of the sport: Duke Snider (389 home runs for the club, the franchise record), Gil Hodges (361), Roy Campanella (242, three MVP awards in 1951, 1953 and 1955), Pee Wee Reese (1,338 runs, still the club record) and Robinson himself. The 1953 team, at 105-49, is the best record of the era, and the club still came up short.
Then came 1955. The Dodgers beat the Yankees in seven games, 4-3, for the franchise's first championship. It is well documented that Johnny Podres pitched a shutout in Game 7, 2-0. It was Brooklyn's only title. The club left for Los Angeles after the 1957 season.
Los Angeles and the pitching clubs (1958 to 1966)
The move west was the beginning of a different team. The Dodgers played in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum from 1958 to 1961 (the best season attendance in those four years was 2,253,887) and then in Dodger Stadium from 1962. The park is the subject of its own ballpark guide, and the site's reference data gives it a capacity of 56,000 and symmetrical power alleys: 330 feet down each line, 385 to the alleys and 395 to center.
The pitching staff is the reason the 1960s mattered. The team won four pennants in eight seasons and three titles:
- 1959: beat the White Sox, 4-2. The first Los Angeles championship.
- 1963: swept the Yankees, 4-0. Sandy Koufax won the MVP and Cy Young awards that year.
- 1965: beat Minnesota, 4-3. Koufax won his second Cy Young.
- 1966: lost to Baltimore, 0-4. Koufax won his third Cy Young and then retired. The Dodgers famously scored almost no runs in the series.
Koufax (165 wins, 2,396 strikeouts, 2.76 ERA) and Don Drysdale (209 wins, 2,486 strikeouts, 49 shutouts) sit third and fourth on the club's strikeout list behind Clayton Kershaw and Don Sutton. The 1963 sweep of the Yankees was especially sweet, because it followed six World Series losses to the same opponent in the Brooklyn years. The players article goes through the careers.
1974 to 1988: the long contender
After the 1966 loss, the club's next pennant came in 1974. From there to 1988 the Dodgers won four more, and the pattern of the postseason changes, because the National League now had a championship series. The sheet records the full run:
| Year | NLCS result | World Series result |
|---|---|---|
| 1974 | Beat Pittsburgh, 3-1 | Lost to Oakland, 1-4 |
| 1977 | Beat Philadelphia, 3-1 | Lost to the Yankees, 2-4 |
| 1978 | Beat Philadelphia, 3-1 | Lost to the Yankees, 2-4 |
| 1981 | Beat Montreal, 3-2 | Beat the Yankees, 4-2 |
| 1983 | Lost to Philadelphia, 1-3 | Did not reach |
| 1985 | Lost to St. Louis, 2-4 | Did not reach |
| 1988 | Beat the Mets, 4-3 | Beat Oakland, 4-1 |
The Dodgers lost to Oakland in 1974 and to the Yankees in 1977 and 1978. In 1981 they got their revenge. That season was split into two halves by a players' strike, which produced an extra round, a division series against Houston, and Los Angeles won that one 3-2 as well. Fernando Valenzuela was the Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young winner. The 1981 title was the club's first since 1965.
The 1988 title came from a club that went through the NLCS on a seven-game win over the Mets. Orel Hershiser won the Cy Young, Kirk Gibson the MVP, and it is among the most famous at-bats in baseball history that Gibson, hobbled by injury, hit a pinch-hit home run in Game 1 of the World Series. The Dodgers won the series in five games. Tom Lasorda managed from 1976 to 1996 (1,599-1,439 in 3,041 games). His predecessor Walter Alston managed 3,658 games and won 2,040 of them, both club records.
The drought: 1989 to 2012
After 1988 came a quarter century of ordinary success. The Dodgers made the postseason in 1995 (a division title, swept by Cincinnati 0-3), 1996 (a wild card, swept by Atlanta 0-3), 2004 (lost to St. Louis, 1-3), 2006 (a wild card, swept by the Mets 0-3), and then won back-to-back National League Division Series in 2008 and 2009, both followed by NLCS losses to Philadelphia by 1-4. In eight postseason series between 1995 and 2009, they won two.
The period also produced a run of Rookie of the Year winners that is unmatched in the sheet: Eric Karros (1992), Mike Piazza (1993), Raul Mondesi (1994), Hideo Nomo (1995) and Todd Hollandsworth (1996), five in a row. Eric Gagne won the 2003 Cy Young and went on to be the second-leading saver in club history, at 161.
2013 to 2019: the best team in the division and no title
The Dodgers won their division every year from 2013 to 2020 and again in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. In the first stretch the postseason results are the opposite of the regular season:
- 2013: won the NLDS over Atlanta (3-1), lost the NLCS to St. Louis (2-4).
- 2014: lost the NLDS to St. Louis (1-3). Clayton Kershaw won both the Cy Young Award and the MVP that year.
- 2015: lost the NLDS to the Mets (2-3).
- 2016: beat Washington (3-2), lost the NLCS to the Cubs (2-4).
- 2017: swept Arizona and beat the Cubs in the NLCS (4-1), then lost the World Series to Houston in seven games (3-4).
- 2018: beat Atlanta (3-1) and Milwaukee (4-3), then lost the World Series to Boston (1-4).
- 2019: lost the NLDS to Washington (2-3).
Clayton Kershaw, who pitched for the club from 2008 through 2025, is the cleanest summary of the period. The sheet credits him with 223 wins (second to Don Sutton's 233), 3,052 strikeouts (the franchise record) and a 2.53 ERA, the third best among Dodgers with 1,000 innings. His three Cy Young awards, 2011, 2013 and 2014, and the 2014 MVP are on the record. His October record is a subject of long debate among fans, and series results alone cannot settle it.
Dave Roberts took over in 2016, and through 2025 he has managed 1,519 games with a 944-575 record, the best winning percentage of any Dodgers manager with more than 800 games. The Dodgers won the pennant in both 2017 and 2018, which put them in the World Series in back-to-back years for the first time since the 1970s.
2020: the title in the short season
The 2020 season was cut to 60 games by the pandemic, and the postseason was expanded to include a first round. The Dodgers swept Milwaukee in the wild-card round (2-0), swept San Diego in the NLDS (3-0), came back from a 3-1 deficit to beat Atlanta in seven games in the NLCS (4-3) and then beat Tampa Bay in the World Series, four games to two. Because of the short schedule, some people discount the title. The sheet counts it as the club's seventh championship, and the record book treats it like any other title.
2021 to 2025: the back-to-back titles
The most recent chapter has been the most successful in terms of regular-season record and the most mixed in terms of October.
| Year | Result |
|---|---|
| 2021 | Beat St. Louis in the wild-card game (1-0), beat San Francisco in the NLDS (3-2), lost the NLCS to Atlanta (2-4) |
| 2022 | 111-51, lost the NLDS to San Diego (1-3) |
| 2023 | Lost the NLDS to Arizona, swept (0-3) |
| 2024 | Beat San Diego (3-2), beat the Mets (4-2), beat the Yankees (4-1) in the World Series |
| 2025 | Beat Cincinnati (2-0), beat Philadelphia (3-1), beat Milwaukee (4-0), beat Toronto (4-3) in the World Series |
The two losses to division rivals in 2022 and 2023 were the sharp end of the format change that introduced a bye for the top two seeds in each league: a team with 111 wins has the right to wait for a series that starts at home, but a short series still contains the risk. The history of the World Series covers the championship round that follows. Shohei Ohtani won the MVP award in both 2024 and 2025, as listed on the sheet.
The 2024 and 2025 titles are the first back-to-back championships for the franchise. The 2025 final was a seven-game series with Toronto, 4-3, the Blue Jays' third pennant.
Rivals in the same division
The NL West has produced several opponents that the Dodgers have met in October. The Padres beat them in 2022 and lost to them in 2020 and 2024. Arizona swept them in 2023 after losing to them 0-3 in 2017, as the Diamondbacks history covers, and the Colorado Rockies have not met them in a postseason series in the sheet.
Common questions
How many World Series have the Dodgers won? Nine, in 1955, 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988, 2020, 2024 and 2025. The 1955 title was won in Brooklyn.
How many times have they lost to the Yankees in the World Series? Eight times, from 1941 through 1978, and they have beaten them four times (1955, 1963, 1981, 2024). Counting all 12 meetings, that is 4 wins and 8 losses.
What is the best regular-season record in team history? 111-51 in 2022. It ended in a division series loss to San Diego.
Which manager won the most games? Walter Alston, with 2,040 wins in 3,658 games from 1954 to 1976, then Tom Lasorda with 1,599.
What is the franchise attendance record? 4,012,470 at Dodger Stadium in 2025, the highest season total on the sheet.
Where to go next
For the full story from Brooklyn to today, start with the Dodgers franchise history and read the best players in the club's history. For how the championship round has changed over time, see the history of the World Series. Standings, schedules and results are on the Dodgers team page, and the park is at UNIQLO Field at Dodger Stadium.