The scene was familiar, since the Dodgers They came out of their dugout Thursday night to celebrate a National League West title, one they won with a defeat 7-2 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 two years, it was much more difficult to win it.
This season, after all, wasn’t like most of the club’s decades of regular-season dominance, when they have often clinched the division long before the finish line, inching down the stretch with double-digit leads. .
It wasn’t like 2018, either, when the Dodgers dug themselves out of an early-season hole and clinched the title in Game 163; the last time they had secured the division at Chavez Ravine.
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Claiming this year’s crown followed a different kind of script: one wrapped in unprecedented expectations after their multi-billion-dollar offseason, repeatedly derailed by injuries to their patchy starting rotation and finally secured with a series of defining moments. the season that filled the final stretch.
“Like I’ve been saying,” said veteran shortstop Miguel Rojas, “this will prepare us for what comes next.”
Their series win over the Padres this week sums it all up.
After losing Tuesday’s first game by one awesome game-ending triple playCutting the division lead over second-place San Diego to just two games with five remaining, the Dodgers responded with two come-from-behind victories following Wednesday’s. 4-3 nail biting with a flurry of late goals on Thursday.
Trailing 2-0 entering the seventh inning, the Dodgers came alive for their NL-leading 41st comeback of the season, scoring five times in the seventh and two more times in the eighth.
Will Smith began the comeback, hitting a game-tying two-run homer to center immediately and celebrating with a two-handed bat.
Shohei Ohtani put the Dodgers ahead three batters later, launching 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, launching a two-run single the other way to open a three-run lead that grew even larger in the eighth with a two-run homer by rookie Andy Pages.
“Today kind of epitomized our season,” he said. manager dave robertswho has been in charge of the Dodgers’ last eight National League West Division championships. “We just fought from behind, we fought, we clawed, we clawed and we worked our way to victory.”
Fittingly, it also came with a moment of adversity, when Freddie Freeman left the game with what initially looked like a worrying right ankle injury.
After Betts scored 5-2 in the seventh, Freeman severely sprained his ankle trying to avoid a play at first base. He left the field under his own power, but walked cautiously toward the clubhouse as silence fell over a packed crowd. During the Dodgers clubhouse celebration, he wore a walking boot and relied on crutches.
Luckily for the Dodgers, Freeman told reporters it was just a sprained (and significantly swollen) ankle, leaving him optimistic that he’ll be ready for Game 1 of the NL Division Series on Sept. 5. October.
“It hurt for a while (but) I’m good now,” Freeman said with a relieved smile on the field afterward. “We have already done many treatments. I’m trying to get rid of the swelling. I’m not traveling this weekend (to the team’s series in Colorado). “I will stay back to deal with this and hope to be ready to go on Saturday.”
It wasn’t the first hurdle the Dodgers have faced lately, 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 seeing a division lead that some time it was nine games. be reduced to the red-hot Fathers.
“It would have been easy for us to make excuses,” Roberts said. “You lose three, four, five, six, seven starters; the season is canceled. But not a single person in this clubhouse did that.”
In fact, the Dodgers instead showed a level of character and resilience that has eluded them in the last two postseasons.
For the first time since its unsuccessful pursuit of the San Francisco Giants in 2021, the team has played one meaningful game after another in the final stretch of this season’s march.
And time and time again, they delivered, finding the perfect combination of star-studded offense, reliable relief pitching and spotty rotation production to cement themselves atop the standings.
“Everyone feels sweet, but I’ll tell you, with what we’ve been through this year, this feels a lot sweeter,” Roberts said. “I’m so proud of these guys, the way we fought through adversity, stuck together and found a way to win this division again.”
“It was very close,” Roberts added. “We earned it.”
There was a series win in Arizona a month ago, when the Dodgers suffered an injury to their Clayton Kershaw (whose Postseason status remains in doubt.) after just one inning, but managed to dominate the then second-place Diamondbacks to win three of four games.
There was a recent trip to atlanta and miamiwhere the Dodgers twice lost the first games of the series before managing to come back for a four-game split with the Braves (highlighted by a comeback fueled by a seven-run ninth inning on September 15) and a decisive loss by the Marlins (in which Shohei Ohtani reached the 50-50 threshold historically).
He was there last Sunday against the last-place Colorado Rockies, when Ohtani and Betts created the kind of late magic the team will likely need to take advantage of next month.
And then it all culminated Thursday night against the Padres, in a victory fueled by a one-run, five-inning start from Walker Buehler to keep the lineup within striking distance.
“I think this is a great example of this team being ready,” said Rojas, who missed the game with an adductor injury but helped lead the champagne celebration in the clubhouse. “With the pieces we acquired, the organization put us in the best position to be successful in October. So all I have to say is that we are ready to go into this postseason a little better than before.”
Many questions will follow the Dodgers into October, where they have been assured a first-round bye (and have the inside track to secure home-field advantage during the playoffs), but little else.
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The starting rotation remains a serious concern. Jack Flaherty finished his regular season with two disappointing starts. Yamamoto has yet to pitch beyond the fourth inning since coming off the disabled list earlier this month. Buehler finished his year with a 5.38 ERA, despite the improvements he showed Thursday night. Landon Knack, the other likely member of an October rotation, is a rookie with just 14 major league starts.
The lineup has its own question marks, from the recent injuries to Freeman and Rojas, to the late-season fights between Betts and Smith, and a cast of bottom-half hitters who, night after night, have routinely been hit or miss. fail.
To go far in the postseason, a lot of things will likely have to go right: Ohtani maintaining his torrid late-season pace; the bullpen making up for the expected lack of production from the starting rotation; high-leverage hitting that the Dodgers have struggled to produce in recent postseasons; and there certainly won’t be any more injuries for a shorthanded pitching staff.
But at least the Dodgers have set themselves up for a favorable path, avoiding a best-of-three wild-card round that would have further stressed their pitching.
They are once again champions of the National League West Division; an honor that seemed to have a little more meaning this season.
“A lot of people don’t show a lot of emotion, and I know people think we’re not fighters,” Rojas said, amid a relatively subdued celebration in the clubhouse that belied the difficulty of the journey they took to get there.
“But it’s not like that,” Rojas declared. “In this clubhouse, everyone knows that the heart is there for the team. I think this year we have many things to prove. And we’re going to go into the postseason thinking about it that way.”
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This story originally appeared on Los Angeles Times.
