En route to finishing with the best record in baseball this season the Los Angeles Dodgers clinched the National League West title for an 11th time in the past 12 years and secured home-field advantage through the World Series.
With that also came a first-round bye and automatic spot in the NL Division Series. The Dodgers had five days off while awaiting a winner from the Wild Card Series matchup between the Atlanta Braves and San Diego Padres.
Most anticipated the Padres to be the Dodgers’ NLDS opponent, which came to be after they swept the Braves in two games at Petco Park.
The 2024 NLDS marked just the third playoff meeting between the Dodgers and Padres. Each has come since 2020, and the Dodgers and Padres split the two prior October matchups.
Despite questions to their starting rotation, the Dodgers overcame a 2-1 series deficit to eliminate the Padres in five games. Their pitching staff closed out the NLDS with 24 consecutive scoreless innings.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto helped set the tone in Game 5 by limiting the Padres to just two hits — both singles — over five innings as he outdueled fellow Japanese native Yu Darvish.
Now the Dodgers face the New York Mets in a rematch of the 1988 NL Championship Series. Los Angeles upset New York that year and famously went on to win the World Series against the Oakland Athletics.
Dodgers make postseason history
Coupled with the Philadelphia Phillies getting eliminated as the No. 2 seed, the Dodgers made National League postseason history as the first team to advance after earning a bye.
MLB’s expanded playoffs format began in 2022, and up until the Dodgers this year year, only the Houston Astros and New York Yankees reached the Championship Series after finishing as a top-two seed and earning a bye week. The Astros are the only such team that’s won the World Series under the current format.
Dave Roberts savors eliminating Padres
The Dodgers are back in the NLCS for the first time since 2021, when they got there by winning a Wild Card Game and defeating the San Francisco Giants in the NLDS.
Their October success thus far in 2024 not only snapped a streak of consecutive postseason eliminations to an NL West opponent, but came against a Padres team that many touted as superior to the Dodgers.
“I’ll tell you, this rivals 2004 when we beat the Yankees, when I was a player with the Red Sox. It rivals beating the Braves in 2020 to get to the World Series,” manager Dave Roberts admitted.
“This is right there with it. You’re talking about one of the best teams in baseball over there. And Mike (Shildt) and his staff did a great job preparing those guys. And it was a dogfight. I’ve got nothing but respect for those guys over there.
“But to kind of win this series how we did, to kind of fall behind, and those guys coming into the postseason had a lot of momentum, speaks to the character of our guys. This is right up there.”
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