Dodgers follow a different path in capturing their 11th NL West crown in 12 seasons

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 with the last couple years, came much harder earned.

Read more: Plaschke: No second guessing! Dodgers division title another triumph for Dave Roberts

This season, 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, coasting down the stretch with double-digit game leads.

It wasn’t like 2018, either, when the Dodgers dug themselves out of an early-season hole and surged to the title in Game 163; the last time they’d clinched the division at Chavez Ravine.

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.

“Like I’ve been saying," veteran shortstop Miguel Rojas said, "this is gonna prepare us for what is coming next."

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, scoring five times in the seventh and twice again in the eighth.

Will Smith started the rally, smacking a game-tying two-run homer to straightaway center that he celebrated with a two-handed bat flip.

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.

"Today sort of epitomized our season," said manager Dave Roberts, who has been at the helm for the Dodgers' last eight NL West championships. "Just kind of battling from behind, fighting, scratching, clawing and willing ourselves to victory."

Fittingly, it also came with a moment of adversity, when Freddie Freeman exited the game with what initially looked like a concerning right ankle injury.

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. He left the field under his own power, but walked gingerly to the clubhouse as a hush fell upon a sellout crowd. During the Dodgers' clubhouse celebration, he was wearing a walking boot while leaning on crutches.

Luckily for the Dodgers, Freeman 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 obstacle 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 would've been easy for us to make excuses," Roberts said. "You lose three, four, five, six, seven starters — write the season off. But not one person in this clubhouse did that."

Indeed, the Dodgers instead displayed a level of character and resiliency that has eluded them the last 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,” Roberts said. “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.”

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 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, in a victory keyed by a five-inning, one-run start from Walker Buehler to keep the lineup within striking distance.

"I think this is a great example that this team is ready," said Rojas, who missed the game with an adductor injury but helped lead the 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.”

Plenty of questions will follow the Dodgers into October — where they've been assured of a first-round bye (and have the inside track to clinching home-field advantage throughout the playoffs) but little else.

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. Buehler finished his year with 5.38 ERA, despite the improvements he flashed Thursday night. 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 seemed to carry a little more meaning this season.

“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.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.