The scene was familiar, as the Dodgers poured out of their dugout Thursday night in celebration of a National League West title, one they clinched with a 7-2 defeat of the San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium.
However, this accomplishment — the franchise’s 22nd division championship, and 11th in the last 12 years — felt a little different.
And, compared to the last couple years, came much harder earned.
This division title, after all, wasn’t like most in the club’s decade-long run of regular-season dominance, when they’ve often locked up the division well before the finish line, usually holding double-digit game leads.
It wasn’t like 2018, either, when the Dodgers dug themselves out of an early-season hole and locked up the title in Game 163; the last time they’d clinched the division at Chavez Ravine.
Read more: Plaschke: No second guessing! Dodgers division title another triumph for Dave Roberts
Claiming this year’s crown followed a different kind of script — one shrouded in unprecedented expectations following their billion-dollar offseason, repeatedly derailed by injuries to their patchwork starting rotation and finally secured with a string of season-defining moments that littered the stretch run.
Their series win over the Padres this week epitomized it all.
After losing Tuesday’s opener on a stunning, game-ending triple-play, trimming the division lead over second-place San Diego to just two games with five to go, the Dodgers responded with two come-from-behind wins, following up Wednesday’s 4-3 nail-biter with a flurry of late scoring Thursday.
Trailing 2-0 entering the seventh inning, the Dodgers surged to life for their NL-leading 41st comeback of the season.
Will Smith got the game tied, celebrating a two-run homer to straightaway center with a two-handed bat flip as he strolled out of the box.
Shohei Ohtani put the Dodgers in front three batters later, sneaking a go-ahead RBI single through the right side of the infield to continue his torrid late-season pace.
Mookie Betts added an exclamation point, slapping a two-run single the other way to open a three-run lead that grew even more in the eighth on a two-run homer from rookie Andy Pages.
“I think this is a great example that this team is ready,” said veteran shortstop Miguel Rojas, who missed the game with an adductor injury but helped lead the postgame clubhouse champagne celebration. “With the pieces that we acquired, the organization put ourselves in the best position to actually have success in October. So all I have to say is, we’re ready to approach this postseason a little bit better than before.”
Luckily for the Dodgers, they won’t have to do it without Freddie Freeman.
After Betts made the score 5-2 in the seventh, Freeman badly rolled his ankle trying to avoid a tag on a play at first base. The eight-time All-Star and former MVP immediately collapsed to the ground in seemingly serious pain. He left the field under his own power, but walked gingerly to the clubhouse as a hush fell upon a sellout crowd.
When broadcast cameras showed him on crutches and wearing a walking boot in the clubhouse, it appeared he might have sustained a serious injury.
But, he later told reporters it was only a sprained (and significantly swollen) ankle, leaving him optimistic he’ll be ready for the National League Division Series opener on Oct. 5.
“It hurt for a while [but] I’m OK right now,” Freeman said with a relieved smile on the field afterward. “We’ve already done a lot of treatment on it. I’m trying to get the swelling off of it. I’m not going to travel this weekend [to the team’s series in Colorado]. I’m going to stay back to treat this thing and hopefully be ready to go by Saturday.”
It wasn’t the first adversity the Dodgers have faced of late, not after losing every member of their opening day starting rotation to injuries (only Yoshinobu Yamamoto has returned in time to pitch in the postseason) and watching a once nine-game division lead dwindle to the red-hot Padres.
It wasn’t the regular season the Dodgers had in mind, not when they bolstered their roster with superstar talent during their winter spending spree.
It didn’t come with a 100-win total, either, with the Dodgers already guaranteed of falling short of that mark for the first time in six years (excluding the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign).
But it did require a level of character and resiliency that has eluded the club the past two postseasons. For the first time since their unsuccessful chase of the San Francisco Giants in 2021, the team has played meaningful game after meaningful game in the closing stretch of this season’s march.
And time and again, they managed to deliver, finding just the right combination of star-studded offense, reliable relief pitching and patchwork rotation production to cement themselves atop the standings.
“They all feel sweet, but I’ll tell you man, with what we’ve gone through this year, this feels a tick sweeter,” said manager Dave Roberts, who has been at the helm of the club’s last eight division titles. “I’m just so proud of these guys, the way that we’ve fought the adversity, stuck together and found a way to win this division again.”
“It was hard-fought,” Roberts added. “We earned it.”
Indeed, there was the series win in Arizona a month ago, when the Dodgers suffered an injury to Clayton Kershaw (whose status for the postseason remains in doubt) after just one inning, yet managed to overpower the then-second-place Diamondbacks to win three of four games.
There was the recent trip to Atlanta and Miami, where the Dodgers twice dropped opening games of series before managing to rally for a four-game split with the Braves (highlighted by a comeback win keyed by a seven-run ninth-inning on Sept. 15) and a rubber-match defeat of the Marlins (in which Shohei Ohtani reached the 50-50 threshold in historic fashion).
There was last Sunday’s walk-off against the last-place Colorado Rockies, when Ohtani and Betts created the kind of late-game magic the team will probably need to tap into come next month.
And then it all culminated on Thursday night against the Padres, allowing the Dodgers to celebrate a division title at home for the first time since 2018.
“Today sort of epitomized our season,” Roberts said. “Just kind of battling from behind, fighting, scratching, clawing and willing ourselves to victory.”
Now, attention will turn toward October — where the Dodgers have assured themselves of a first-round bye (and have the inside track to clinching home-field advantage throughout the playoffs) but little else given the questions surrounding their shorthanded, ever-evolving roster.
Read more: What was (and wasn’t) discussed in Dodgers’ pitching meeting with Shohei Ohtani
The starting rotation remains a serious concern. Jack Flaherty finished his regular season with two underwhelming starts. Yamamoto has yet to pitch past the fourth inning since coming off the injured list earlier this month. Walker Buehler produced a solid five-inning, one-run start Thursday, but still has a 5.38 ERA. Landon Knack, the other likely member of an October rotation, is a rookie with just 14 career big-league outings.
The lineup has question marks of its own, from the recent injuries to Freeman and Rojas, to late-season scuffles from Betts and Smith, to a cast of bottom-half hitters who, on a night-to-night basis, have been routinely hit or miss.
To make a deep postseason run, many things will probably have to go right: Ohtani maintaining his torrid late-season pace; the bullpen compensating for an expected lack of production from the starting rotation; clutch high-leverage hitting that the Dodgers have struggled to produce in recent postseasons; and certainly no further injuries to a shorthanded pitching staff.
But at the very least, the Dodgers have primed themselves for a favorable path, avoiding a best-of-three wild-card round that would have further stressed their pitching.
They are NL West champs again; an honor that this season felt uniquely satisfying.
“A lot of people, they don’t show a lot of emotions, and I know people think we’re not fighters,” Rojas said, amid a relatively mild clubhouse celebration that belied the difficulty of the journey they took to get there.
“But it’s not like that,” Rojas declared. “In this clubhouse, everybody knows that the heart is there for the team. I think this year we’ve got a lot of things to prove. And we’re gonna go to the postseason thinking about it that way.”
Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
