The Los Angeles Dodgers are on the doorstep of clinching their ninth National League West division title in the past decade despite there being nearly a month left in the regular season.
The earliest the Dodgers can clinch a playoff berth is Sunday, while they can also lock up the division on Tuesday against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Although L.A. is more than likely to clinch the NL West within the next handful of days, they’ll still have roughly three more weeks of games to play.
While clinching has felt inevitable for a few weeks now, the Dodgers are still focused on winning every game, one day at a time. “I mean, I think we all know what kind of lead we have,” Freddie Freeman said.
“But if you start looking at that, that lead is going to evaporate because you get a little bit relaxed and stuff like that. I like the way we’ve been playing games the last few days. Even [Friday’s] game was a good baseball game.
“We’ve just got to keep the foot on the pedal, keep going, clinch it and then whenever we do clinch it, just keep going after that too.”
The Dodgers found themselves in a similar spot in 2017 before a rough month of September that saw them drop 11 straight games at one point. Manager Dave Roberts believes the Dodgers can guard against complacency by focusing on the quality of baseball they’re playing,
“Our expectation is to out there and play Dodger baseball, and that’s to try to play 27 outs on the top and the bottom of each inning,” Roberts recently said.
Max Muncy shared in the sentiment earlier this week, noting the Dodgers are just trying to control what they can control and taking each game on playing one pitch at a time.
“We’re focusing on the things that we can focus on,” Muncy said. “You know, we go out there and play good baseball every single day, at the end of the day, we feel good with where we’re going to be at.”
The Dodgers are also in a potential position to tie or break the MLB all-time single-season wins record, but that’s not something they are putting much thought into.
Dodgers join rare company in MLB history
As a result of outscoring the San Diego Padres by four runs on Saturday, the Dodgers became the first MLB team to reach a +300 run differential in a season since the 2001 Seattle Mariners. Only nine other teams in MLB history have finished a season +300 or better.
The Dodgers’ run differential currently sits at +301, which would be their best mark in franchise history. The second highest was set by the 1889 Brooklyn Bridegrooms, who finished the season at +290, and top five is rounded out by the 2019 (+273) and 2021 (+269) L.A. Dodgers, and the 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers (+266).
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