The Dodgers are already another step closer to a third straight World Series.
Thanks to the Braves’ loss to the Reds on Thursday night, the Dodgers were assured of finishing the season with a top-two record in the National League, clinching a first-round bye that ensures they will not be subjected to a best-of-three wild-card series next week.
Instead, the Dodgers will begin their postseason quest in the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 3, holding home-field advantage for that best-of-five series as they go for the first three-peat by an NL team in MLB history.
First-round byes have not always been kind to the Dodgers.
After MLB expanded its postseason field five years ago — creating a five-day layoff for the top-two seeds in each league between the end of the regular season and the start of their playoff schedules — the Dodgers were knocked out in the NLDS as a bye team in 2022 and 2023. Both years, questions about the negative side effects of the weeklong break loomed large in the wake of their elimination.
Thus, after receiving a bye again in 2024, the team altered its off-week schedule, incorporating more simulated game activities and making a concerted effort to spend more time at the ballpark together on workout days.
It paid off in that year’s division series, when the Dodgers overcame a two-games-to-one deficit to the Padres en route to the first of their back-to-back titles.
Last year, the team failed to earn a top-two seed but swept the Reds in two games in the wild-card series to begin their World Series defense.
This season, securing a bye became a critical objective for the club down the stretch. The last thing their aging roster needed was two extra playoff games. Ongoing injuries to Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman also amplified the importance of getting extra time off ahead of another October gauntlet.
“It’s always helpful in the sense of giving your guys a break to reset,” manager Dave Roberts said earlier this month. “But given all the tax and where our guys are healthwise, to get that week would be huge.”
The Dodgers, who entered Thursday with a 97-61 record, still have an outside shot at the NL’s No. 1 seed, as well, but would need to run the table over the season’s final weekend and have the Brewers — who currently hold MLB’s best record at 100-59 — get swept in their final series against the already-eliminated Cardinals.
“I think it’s more about just playing good baseball,” Roberts said this week when asked how much of a priority the top seed would be. “The last couple weeks, we’ve just played good baseball, and the fallout is this or that. We want to get the bye, and then if it happens that we keep playing well and we gain a couple games on the Brewers, great.”
Indeed, the club’s primary postseason seeding objectives have already been met. They’ve won their 13th NL West division title in the last 14 years. They’ve given themselves the shortest possible route through the playoffs. And now, they’ll have ample time next week to prepare for an unprecedented three-peat bid.
