BRAVE Blue WORLD
Just three teams have won seven or more consecutive division titles since Major League Baseball split the American and National leagues into three divisions 25 years ago.
The 1991 to 2005 Braves are the standard bearer, winning 14 straight division titles in a run that began under the old two-division format. The 1998 to 2006 Yankees followed, winning nine straight division crowns to set the stage for five World Series appearances and three consecutive championships.
The third is the present-day Dodgers.
The Dodgers have won seven straight National League West titles since 2013, capped by a franchise-record 106 wins last season. They’ve done that while maintaining a top-five farm system for six straight years despite never picking higher than 18th in the draft. They’ve had stars age out or leave in free agency and replaced them with young, homegrown stars over and over again.
In the era of the luxury tax, caps on draft and international signing bonuses and extra draft picks awarded to small-revenue clubs—constraints the aforementioned Braves and Yankees teams were not subject to—the Dodgers have thrived in a system designed exactly to prevent such single-team supremacy.
The most concerning part for opposing clubs? Seven years in, the Dodgers show no signs of slowing down.
“They’re the model right now,” one rival NL executive said. “They’re hitting on all cylinders. They’re drafting very well. They’re developing very well. They’re obviously very good at the big league
