Twenty-three different players have stood in the batter's box in a Dodgers uniform this season. Another 32 have thrown a pitch. After Josue De Paula made his major league debut, the Dodgers have now used 52 different players in 2026 — a remarkable number considering rosters are capped at 26 active players for the first five months of the regular season.

If it seems like the Dodgers deploy two different teams — an "A squad" and a "B squad" — it's because they do. Winning 90 or more games every year while rotating two entirely different sets of players in and out is an art form. Arguably no team has mastered the form better than the Dodgers.

It's not merely a luxury for the team with baseball's highest payroll (including competitive-balance tax payouts). It's a necessity for a team whose 2024 and 2025 regular seasons began in Asia, earlier than 28 other teams, and did not end until the final out of the World Series, later than 28 other teams.

The toll of that workload catching up to the Dodgers was never a question of "if" but "when." In an interview this week on Foul Territory, third baseman Max Muncy conceded the obvious.

"There's a lot of mileage on this team right now," Muncy said. "You think about the last two seasons that we played. Obviously we won [the World Series both years] but they were also two of the longest seasons in history, in terms of when we started, when we finished, starting overseas."

The Dodgers' recent eight-game winning streak masks several underlying concerns.

Shohei Ohtani is on the injured list. Mookie Betts will either finish with the worst or second-worst statistical season of his career; 2025 will be the other. Freddie Freeman's .823 OPS is his worst since 2012, when he was in his second season with the Atlanta Braves.

The Dodgers' over-30 stars have never looked more past their peak. Muncy, coincidentally, is on pace to finish a season with at least 30 home runs for the fifth time ever at age 36.

If the negative effects of age and workload aren't catching up to Muncy, it isn't obvious from his stats. That doesn't mean he isn't feeling it.

"It's a lot of mileage on everybody," he said, "and to show up and try to win 110 games like that, that would have been almost impossible to do. It's just not realistic."

Muncy praised the Dodgers' "fancy" hyperbaric chamber that "everyone's been crushing lately" for keeping players fresh. Arguably more important is the constant stream of Triple-A call-ups, waiver-wire claims and other midseason acquisitions who allow the Dodgers' "A" team to perform their best when they're on the field.

The same reserve squad that keeps the Dodgers' veterans fresh effectively keeps them from winning 110 games every year. How steep a price that is depends on how much one values winning a World Series — a feat the Dodgers will attempt to "three-peat" again soon.

Sign up for our free newsletter and follow us on X/Twitter and Facebook for the latest news.