The Arizona Diamondbacks Vs Dodgers Timeline A Detailed History Of Matchups Rivalries And Key Moments

So You Want To Know Everything About D-Backs vs Dodgers

The Arizona Diamondbacks and Dodgers have been playing each other since 1998, which is when Arizona got its first MLB team. That's a long time. Nearly three decades of games, playoff meetings, and enough tension to make anyone who watches both teams tired. I've tracked this rivalry for years, and it's one of those NL West matchups where the records don't tell the whole story. Let me walk you through how this actually played out, because if you just look at win-loss records you're missing what matters. 1998-2001 was the early period. Arizona was the expansion team trying to figure things out. The Dodgers were... well, the Dodgers. During those first few seasons, LA held a comfortable advantage. But here's what most people don't remember: Arizona won 95 games in 2001 and then went on to win the World Series. They beat the Dodgers in the NLDS that year in five games. That was the moment this rivalry stopped being a novelty and became actual tension. Randy Johnson was untouchable. Curt Schilling was worse than untouchable. The Dodgers couldn't solve them in any way that mattered.

The 2000s had some memorable moments. The 2001 playoffs I already mentioned. Then there was 2007, when Arizona won the Wild Card and the Dodgers missed the postseason entirely despite having a decent roster. The Dodgers had Clayton Kershaw coming up. Arizona had Letroy White and Chris Snyder and Brandon Webb, who was actually good. Arizona took the season series that year. It wasn't close in the standings, but it still stung for LA fans. 2015 changed everything. That was the year the Dodgers started spending like they had money, and the Diamondbacks were stuck in what felt like a permanent rebuild. The Dodgers won the NL West with 93 wins. Arizona won 78. The gap was visible in every game. But then 2017 happened, and Arizona came back strong, won the division, and the Dodgers were watching from behind again. Maddux, Torreyes, Pollock, Greinke — that 2017 team had some soul. They lost to the Dodgers in the Wild Card round though, so don't romanticize it too hard. The 2023 NLDS is the one everyone remembers. Arizona was the lower seed. Nobody gave them much chance. Then they took Game 1 at home, won Game 2, and somehow found themselves up 2-0 in the series. The Dodgers came back to win Games 3 and 4 in LA, forcing a Game 5 in Arizona. Zac Gallen pitched a gem. Corbin Carroll made the catch. Christian Walker homered. Arizona won and advanced. The Dodgers collapsed under pressure in a way that felt familiar to anyone who's watched them for more than five years.

Right now in 2026, the Dodgers are the Dodgers again. They've got the payroll and the roster depth. Arizona is always fighting to stay competitive in that division. The head-to-head record over the entire timeline favors Los Angeles, but not by as wide a margin as you might think. There have been stretches where Arizona dominated the season series and stretches where LA swept them. One thing I've noticed that most casual fans miss: this rivalry has a scheduling quirk. Because both teams are in the NL West, they play each other 13 times per regular season. That's more than any other interleague matchup. It means when these teams meet, it's not a special event. It's just Tuesday. That actually makes the meaningful games more meaningful because they happen against a backdrop of routine. The 2023 playoff series felt different precisely because it broke through that normalcy. Another detail people overlook: the pitchers. This matchup has always been defined by starting pitching duels. Johnson vs Loaiza in 2001. Webb vs Schmidt in the mid-2000s. Greinke vs Kershaw in the 2010s. Gallen vs Yoshida or whatever the Dodgers throw at him now. When the starters go long, the game stays close. When they bail out early, it becomes a bullpen chase and the Dodgers' depth usually wins out. That's the pattern. It repeats itself every few years with slightly different names.

If you're trying to find complete stats or game logs, the official MLB site has everything, but it's fragmented. You'll need to pull from Baseball Reference for the detailed box scores and from MLB.com for the playoff recaps. I spent about two hours last month cross-referencing game-by-game results from 2001 to 2023 because I wanted to verify the win percentages in each playoff series. The numbers were mostly right but a couple of the 2017 Wild Card game details were slightly off on one site versus another. Always double-check. The inconsistency is annoying but fixable if you know where to look. What this rivalry really is, at the end of the day, is a case study in how fast fortunes change in baseball. The Dodgers were the also-ran in the late 90s and early 2000s. Then they became the powerhouse. Then Arizona had moments of brilliance. Now the Dodgers are back on top again. It cycles. That's the timeline. That's the story. Nothing more complicated than that.