A familiar phrase in the baseball world these days can be uttered again: The Los Angeles Dodgers are the National League West champions.
With their 7-2 win over the Padres Thursday night in Dodger Stadium, the ballclub clinched the division title for the 11th time in the last 12 seasons, as well as a bye past the Wild Card Series thanks to a better record than the Milwaukee Brewers. The one time in that span the Dodgers didn't win the West, they won 106 games and went to the NLCS. It's a remarkable run of consistent regular-season excellence.
This time around, things got a bit worrisome a few times down the stretch. Despite building a nine-game lead in late June and still holding one as high as 7 1/2 games in late July, the Dodgers dealt with surges from both the Diamondbacks and Padres, seeing the lead shrink to three games in late August before pushing it back up to six games heading into September. The Padres kept coming, though, and after Monday night's win in Dodger Stadium had the Dodgers' lead down to two games. The Dodgers responded with back-to-back wins to close down the division, though.
The 2024 season is the first full season since 2018 that the Dodgers won't get to 100 wins. That's a good illustration of how much adversity the team faced, relatively speaking. In particular, their rotation has been ravaged with injuries: only two pitchers made more than 20 starts and none made more than 25.
They have maintained their winning ways behind organizational depth and a high-powered offense headed up by three MVPs. Shohei Ohtani is very likely winning the NL MVP this season after the first 50-50 year in MLB history. Fellow offseason acquisition Teoscar Hernández has had a great offensive season. Mookie Betts (when healthy) and Freddie Freeman have also been stellar.
Of course, part of the Dodgers franchise setting such a high bar in the regular season means the hard part comes next. Making the playoffs isn't good enough anymore. They won the NL pennant in 2017 and 2018 and the World Series in 2020, but have gone 1-6 in playoff games in the last two seasons. The season will be considered a failure if the Dodgers don't make a deep playoff run and that means at least the NLCS and probably even getting to the World Series. There are even some who would call the season a failure if they lose in the World Series. That just comes with the territory in an organization that has done so much winning.
For now, though, the Dodgers have done their jobs in the regular season. They are once again the best in the West.
