The Dodgers can wrap up the NL West at any moment, and they have made a small project out of not doing it. Their magic number has been one since Tuesday. They have spent two days failing to burn it.
Los Angeles clinched a playoff spot Monday with a 4-1 win at Cincinnati, its 14th straight postseason berth, tying the record Atlanta set from 1991 through 2005. Tarik Skubal threw seven scoreless innings. Kyle Tucker and Teoscar Hernandez homered. Routine stuff by their standards.
Then Wednesday happened. Elly De La Cruz hit a two-run homer, the Reds won 6-2 for their first win over the Dodgers all season, and Los Angeles went 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position. San Diego beat Colorado 9-3 the same night, so the clinch waited again. The Dodgers entered Thursday’s finale at 92-60 with Justin Wrobleski fronting a bullpen game against Brady Singer.
Whenever it lands, it is a fifth straight NL West title and the 13th in 14 years. Nobody is celebrating the inevitable.
The Snell scare was the real news
Wednesday’s loss did not matter. Blake Snell leaving after one inning and 19 pitches with left groin tightness did.
Snell said he felt something grab on the second-to-last pitch of his pregame bullpen, tried to work through the first inning, and pulled himself rather than push it. His own read afterward was encouraging: he said it does not feel as severe as his previous groin issues and that he expects to make another start before the regular season ends. Given his injury history, that is about as good as a one-inning exit can go.
The rest of the staff is trending correctly. Edwin Diaz is set to be activated Friday after finishing a rehab assignment, though Dave Roberts wants him proving himself in low-leverage innings first. Andy Pages should be back during the final homestand. The October variable that matters is Shohei Ohtani, who has not pitched since early July with biceps and left knee discomfort.
Still the NL favorite, and it is not close
Milwaukee has the better record and will probably own home field. That matters less than people want it to.
October is a top-of-the-rotation sport, and no other team in the league can run out Skubal, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Snell across three consecutive games. Skubal is the two-time reigning AL Cy Young winner and has been the best pitcher alive for two years. Yamamoto has been excellent all season. Tyler Glasnow, sharp since returning from the injured list, is either a fourth starter or a bullpen weapon depending on how Roberts builds the roster.
The offense is the wobble, and it is a real one. Two months of inconsistency plus an 0-for-11 night with runners in scoring position is not a rounding error, and Ohtani has been grinding through discomfort at the plate. If the bats go quiet in a short series, the arms will not save them.
But this is the same organization that has won the last two World Series, and the arms travel better than the bats in October. Clinch it Thursday, clinch it this weekend, it does not change the math. The Dodgers are the National League favorite until somebody beats them in a postseason series, and nobody has done that since 2023.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.