Dodgers defeat Padres to clinch 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.

Even though it came on the same night one of their star players got hurt.

After trailing 2-0 entering the seventh inning, the Dodgers surged to life with a familiarly explosive offensive outburst. Will Smith got the game tied, jumping all over a down-the-middle fastball from Padres starter Joe Musgrove for a two-run homer to center. Shohei Ohtani put the Dodgers in front, sneaking a go-ahead RBI single through the right side of the infield. Mookie Betts added an exclamation point, slapping a two-run single the other way en route to the Dodgers’ 41st comeback win of the season.

Moments later, however, came a moment of grave concern.

Read more: What was (and wasn’t) discussed in Dodgers’ pitching meeting with Shohei Ohtani

As he tried to avoid a tag at first base, veteran slugger Freddie Freeman badly rolled his right ankle two steps past the bag. The eight-time All-Star and former MVP immediately collapsed to the ground in seemingly serious pain. He walked off the field under his own power, but walked gingerly back to the clubhouse as a hush fell upon a sellout crowd.

Two innings later, the Dodgers were back to celebrating, cementing their place atop the standings on the night of their NL-leading 41st comeback win of the season.

“Man, I’m telling you, I couldn’t be more proud of these guys,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said during an on-field postgame interview with Spectrum SportsNet. “They fought and fought, overcame adversity. And we checked box No. 1. Long way to go, but we’re going to celebrate tonight.”

But now, attention will turn toward October — where the Dodgers have also assured themselves of a first-round bye, but now have one more concern to address on their already injury-plagued roster.

Thursday’s game mirrored the ups and the downs the Dodgers (95-64) have navigated all season.

This division title, 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, usually holding double-digit game leads.

It wasn’t like 2018, either, when the Dodgers dug themselves out of an early-season hole and locked up 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 earned with a string of season-defining moments that littered the stretch run.

There was the Dodgers’ series win in Arizona a month ago, when they 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 last 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, when the Dodgers salvaged a three-game series that started with a game-losing triple-play Tuesday.

It hasn’t been the regular season the Dodgers had in mind, when they bolstered their roster with superstar talent during their winter spending spree.

It didn’t come with a 100-win total, either, with the Dodgers already guaranteed of falling short of that mark for the first time in six years (excluding the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign).

But it did require a level of character and resiliency that has eluded the club the past 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 more times than not, they found a way to manufacture a win, and keep themselves positioned for the easiest route through the playoffs.

“Just fighting to the end, I think, is making our ball club better; raising the level of play, the focus,” Roberts, who has been at the helm for eight division titles, said prior to Thursday’s first pitch. “So, yeah, I think this is a different year, but it’s still always nice to be on top and having people chase you.”

Where they go from here is still very much in question.

Read more: Clayton Kershaw isn’t giving up on a return, but he could still be out for weeks

The pitching staff remains a serious concern. Jack Flaherty finished his regular season with two underwhelming starts and Yoshinobu Yamamoto has yet to pitch past the fourth inning since coming off the injured list, and has been battling an illness lately ahead of his scheduled regular-season finale Saturday in Colorado.

The lineup has question marks of its own — which were only amplified by Freeman’s injury on Thursday, the severity of which wasn’t immediately clear.

And 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; the kind of high-leverage hitting the Dodgers have struggled with 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 hasn’t often felt so satisfying.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.