{"id":165779,"date":"2025-09-26T06:37:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T06:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/dodgers-win-12th-nl-west-title-in-13-years-now-its-world-series-or-bust-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T06:37:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T06:37:09","slug":"dodgers-win-12th-nl-west-title-in-13-years-now-its-world-series-or-bust-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/dodgers-win-12th-nl-west-title-in-13-years-now-its-world-series-or-bust-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Dodgers win 12th NL West title in 13 years. Now, it's World Series or bust – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHOENIX \u2014 The Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a> didn\u2019t ruin baseball this season with their $400 million payroll.
They didn\u2019t set the all-time record for victories. They didn\u2019t win 100 games, let alone even 95.
The Dodgers, with a 90-69 record and three remaining games, will produce their lowest win total since at least 2018.
Yet, while the Dodgers were wiping the sting of the champagne out of their eyes, popping corks and swigging beers Thursday afternoon after their 8-0 rout<\/a> over the Arizona Diamondbacks<\/a>, there was not a single person in the alcohol-cigar smoke filled clubhouse who had the slightest care in the world.
The Dodgers are the National League West Division champions.
Once again, for the 12th<\/sup> time in the last 13 years.
And, yes, despite their dizzying array of pitching injuries, their bullpen woes, their underachieving performances, guess who\u2019s going to the postseason favored to win the World Series once again?
Yep, these same Dodgers, who are trying to become the first National League team to win back-to-back World Series championships since the Cincinnati Reds<\/a>\u2019 Big Red Machine<\/a> in 1975-76.
\u201cVery rewarding,\u2019\u2019 Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. \u201cThat’s one of our goals as we started this season, to win the division. Like I say all of the time, no year is the same. But I do feel that in totality we\u2019re playing our best baseball of the season.
\u201cThe win-loss [record] hasn\u2019t reflected it, but I think that\u2019s wat\u2019s most important, there just has been a lot of good things.\u2019\u2019
Oh sure, they have warts. They still have no idea who will close out games in the postseason. They will be without All-Star catcher Will Smith for likely at least the first round. The bottom of their lineup has no pop after No. 5 hitter Andy Pages. And, with the exception of DH\/starter Shohei Ohtani, who hit his 54th home run on Thursday<\/a> and will win his fourth MVP award, there\u2019s not a single player in the Dodgers\u2019 All-Star lineup who had a career year.
\u201cThis year was harder than ever to get to this point,\u2019\u2019 Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. \u201cWe went through a lot. We had a lot of injuries. We had a lot of ups and downs. Maybe guys haven\u2019t performed how they feel like they should perform, myself included.
\u201cIt was a tough year, but we reached here in the end. I think that speaks to the resilience of this team.\u201d
There have been times the Dodgers wondered if they were the best team in baseball or the worst team money can buy, but despite their roller-coaster ride, here they are, still standing, and will be back playing October baseball.
\u201cEvery season is not going to go how you think it\u2019s going to go in spring training,\u201d said All-Star first baseman Freddie Freeman, who hit two homers on Thursday. \u201cSame as last year, when we won the World Series. We had a lot of our starting pitching hurt. This year, we dealt with a lot, a lot of injuries again. A lot of ups and downs throughout the course of the year.
\u201cBut when you got a good team, great guys, great talent, you\u2019re able to overcome a lot of things. And now we\u2019re starting to play really good baseball as we head into October.\u2019\u2019
Yep, just at the right time.
\u201cYou know, I didn\u2019t have too many expectations on how it was going to play out,\u2019\u2019 Roberts said. \u201cI guess the thing that I think is pretty telling is that all we\u2019ve gone through, that this team stayed connected. And that\u2019s where you get to learn a lot about players, individually and collectively.
\u201cYou know when it gets rough and gets hot, and you start to struggle with injuries, we didn\u2019t make excuses and we kept fighting. Even when it was our darkest, I just always saw our guys stay together and compete. Now I believe the talent, with the fight, is going to show through October. \u2026
\u201cWhen you make excuses, you look for outs, that\u2019s just a sign of weakness. That will show itself. They just don\u2019t make excuses, whether it\u2019s by injury or they\u2019re not performing. It\u2019s just figuring it out. That\u2019s what our guys have done.\u2019\u2019
Just like that, the Dodgers actually might feel better about this year\u2019s edition entering the postseason more than any they\u2019ve had during this glorious postseason stretch.
The principal reason?
Look no further than the starting rotation, which was on full display during the three-game series against the Diamondbacks. They absolutely suffocated the D-backs\u2019 powerful lineup this week: 18 innings, 14 hits, 1 run, 3 walks, 20 strikeouts, 0.50 ERA.
Yes, and that trio of starters with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Shohei Ohtani will be on full display Tuesday when they open the postseason with a best-of-three wild card round against either the third NL wild-card winner: the New York Mets<\/a>, Cincinnati Reds<\/a> or Diamondbacks.
The Dodgers\u2019 rotation has been absolutely uncanny since Aug. 1, yielding an MLB-best 2.81 ERA and leading the league with 327 strikeouts, and .194 batting average.
\u201cThis is as good as I\u2019ve had a starting staff going into the postseason,\u2019\u2019 Roberts said. \u201cBy far.\u2019\u2019
Perhaps outside Cy Young favorite Tarik Skubal \u2014 if the Detroit Tigers<\/a> reach the postseason \u2014 there might not be a more dominant starter than Yamamoto, who\u2019s in his second major-league season after leaving Japan. He gave up just four hits in six innings on Thursday, and is now yielding a 0.79 ERA in his last five starts, with 44 strikeouts in 34.1 innings.
\u201cFor me, the thing that\u2019s impressed me the most is there\u2019s unwavering confidence now,\u2019\u2019 Roberts said. \u201cI think last year, understandably so, you start to wonder if you\u2019re good enough. But that changed again in the [World Series] game in New York. But this year, there\u2019s real confidence. He knows that when he\u2019s on the mound, he\u2019s the best option. He\u2019s the best pitcher, and the players know that.\u2019\u2019
The Dodgers, who will finish the season in Seattle, know they\u2019ll be the ones hunted in October. They\u2019re the ones everyone will want to take down, whether it\u2019s the wild-card team in the first round, the Philadelphia Phillies<\/a> in the second round, or whoever awaits them if they survive the NLDS.
\u201cIt\u2019s no secret that you either love or hate the Dodgers,\u2019\u2019 Roberts said. \u201cAnd every team we play, they’re doing everything they can to beat us, and that’s part of what we signed up for, but it takes a toll. It\u2019s tough every day to bring your best when you know that other teams are bringing their best.
\u201cSo I think we’ve kind of gotten to a point where I think that our guys are on the attack. … I do feel like we\u2019re all aligned and we\u2019re all in the right mindset.
\u201cWe have an opportunity to make history, it hasn\u2019t been easy, but that part shouldn\u2019t be easy.”
Follow Bob Nightengale on X: @Bnightengale<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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PHOENIX \u2014 The Los Angeles Dodgers didn\u2019t ruin baseball this season with their $400 million payroll.They didn\u2019t set the all-time record for victories. They didn\u2019t win 100 games, let alone even 95.The Dodgers, with a 90-69 record and three remaining games, will produce their lowest win total since at least 2018.Yet, while the Dodgers were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":165780,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}