The Dodgers clinched the National League West on Thursday afternoon with
a win over the Arizona Diamondbacks in Phoenix, winning their fourth straight division title and 12th in 13 years. The Dodgers
winning the NL West was expected, but the path was much more turbulent
than many projected.
The Dodgers this year will finish with their worst record since 2018 (91-72), but their victory on Thursday gave them 90 wins for the 12th full season in a row, a stretch that was only interrupted by a 43-17 (.717) 2020 season. The only other team in major league history to win 90 games 12 full years in a row was the New York Yankees, from 1947-58.
Caveat here: ninety wins in a 162-game schedule is roughly the same as 86 wins in the old 154-game schedule. The Yankees had 13 straight years of 86 or more wins from 1946-58, but that was dwarfed by New York’s 18-year streak from 1926-43.
By winning the division, the Dodgers have locked up the No. 3 seed in the National League playoffs, and will
begin their postseason on Tuesday, September 30 at Dodger Stadium hosting the best-of-three wild card series.
When factoring in what is certain to be a record-setting competitive balance tax payment —
breaking last year’s mark, also by the Dodgers — this year
the Dodgers will pay well over $540 million in competitive balance tax payroll and taxes for 2025. With that payroll comes massive expectations, and backlash.
A nine-day span at the end of January
saw consternation over the Dodgers, on two fronts. Their free agent signings of Tanner Scott —
his four-year, $72 million deal is the fifth-largest contract in total value ever signed by a reliever — and
Kirby Yates for one-year, $13 million were seen as excess for
a bullpen that was already deep and stacked.
I’ll pause for laughter.
But another key point in those nine days in January was when Roki Sasaki signed with the Dodgers, too. Sasaki was so hellbent on coming to MLB now rather than wait two years for a surefire nine-figure contract, that he
was forced to sign as an international amateur, and will be subject to three years of near-minimum salaries before three more years of arbitration before even qualifying for true free agency. A 23-year-old, mostly-ready-made major league starting pitcher making a relative pittance is the most coveted type of player in the sport, and literally every team wanted to and could have signed him. The Dodgers couldn’t simply flex their financial muscles to sign Sasaki, yet
he chose to sign with them anyway, for
a $6.5 million signing bonus.
The signings of Sasaki, Scott, and Yates were more
fuel on the “Dodgers are ruining baseball” fire, which makes it darkly funny that those three pitchers have been mostly terrible in 2025, combining for a 4.88 ERA and 27 home runs allowed in 132 2/3 innings.
The Dodgers were by no means a super team, with the rotation, bullpen, and lineup at times missing key pieces due to injury, and several regulars underperforming. Even stars Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman went through arguably the worst stretches of their careers for several weeks. Those two combined to drive in five runs in the clincher on Thursday.
The bullpen carried the pitching staff for a while as several starters were out, and now the bullpen is going through
its worst stretch in years while the rotation is so deep that Emmet Sheehan and Clayton Kershaw — the latter will finish second on the team in starts and innings, amazingly — aren’t expected to start in the postseason.
Despite many problems throughout the year, the Dodgers have spent most of the season in first place. They were in second or third place for three weeks in April, but never more than 2 1/2 games out of first, and after that were one game back of the Padres on three different days in August.
It’s fitting that Yoshinobu Yamamoto was on the mound for Thursday’s division clincher, as he’s been the rock of the pitching staff all season. The right-hander has a 2.49 ERA in 173 2/3 innings, the first Dodgers pitcher with enough innings to qualify since 2022. Yamamoto is one of only three Dodgers pitchers to stay on the active roster all season, along with left-handed relievers Anthony Banda and Jack Dreyer.
For a pitcher who receives
some of the worst run support of any qualified starter in baseball, Yamamoto got his best backing yet with eight runs on Thursday, the most the Dodgers have scored with him in the game all year. Not that Yamamoto needed much support, pitching six scoreless innings in his final regular season start of the year.
The win on Thursday also gave the Dodgers’ the season series over the Diamondbacks at 7-6. They also went 9-4 against both the Padres and Giants, and 11-2 against the Rockies. Going 36-16 (.692) against divisional opponents is a great way to ensure winning it.
This is a special time in Dodgers history, with more NL West titles in the last 13 years (12) than in the previous 44 years combined (11). These things shouldn’t be taken for granted, no matter what happens next.
️: 7:10 p.m. PT
: Los Angeles, CA
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