The Dodgers are back where they almost always end up: in the postseason, with October still looking like their natural habitat.
Los Angeles clinched a playoff berth Monday night with a 4-1 win over the Reds, running its record to 91-0. The Dodgers joined the Brewers on the National League side of the bracket, and while the result wasn’t exactly shocking, it only reinforced how deep this run has become. They’ve now reached the playoffs in 14 straight seasons, matching the Braves’ all-time record from 1991-2005.
That streak is part of a larger stretch of dominance that has already produced five NL pennants and three World Series titles. Once the Dodgers clinch the NL West, it will be their 13th division title in the last 14 years. The only time they didn’t win the division in that span was 2021, when they piled up 106 wins before knocking off the 107-win Giants in the playoffs.
There’s still some room for debate over whether this group already qualifies as a dynasty. Back-to-back championships and three titles in six years make a strong case.
A third straight World Series would erase the argument entirely. No team has completed a threepeat since the 1998-2000 Yankees, and only three other dynasties have ever done it: two other Yankees runs and the 1972-74 Athletics.
The Dodgers also remain in the mix for a first-round bye, though they may not end up as the No. 1 seed. That may not matter much to a team that has already won from the top seed and also won it all as the NL’s No. 3 seed after going through the Wild Card Series.
They’ve even been swept in the NLDS as the one seed. The path hasn’t always looked the same, but the result has lately.
The biggest reason they can make a run at another title starts on the mound. Last season, the Dodgers lined up four frontline starters - Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani - and used that kind of firepower to win the title.
Injuries have changed the picture this year, but a midseason trade for Tarik Skubal and recent returns have put them back in position. Ohtani likely won’t be part of the postseason rotation, since it looks like he won’t pitch again this season, but the group around him is still loaded.
Yamamoto, last year’s World Series MVP, is 13-8 with a 2.62 ERA in 172 innings this season. Between the regular season and playoffs last year, he threw 211 innings. He looks built for a deep October run.
Skubal, who won the AL Cy Young in both 2024 and 2025 for the Tigers, has six career playoff appearances and a 2.04 ERA in those outings. He missed time earlier this season and has thrown 146 ⅔ innings overall, but since joining the Dodgers he owns a 2.52 ERA. That’s a playoff ace.
Snell has been limited to 37 ⅔ innings in seven starts because of injury, but since coming off the IL he has posted a 1.04 ERA with 46 strikeouts. That’s the kind of form that changes a series in a hurry.
Glasnow has had his own injury issues and has made just 11 starts. In four starts since returning, he has a 4.91 ERA in 22 innings.
Of the bunch, he’s the least dominant right now, but he’d still be the No. 1 starter on plenty of playoff clubs. He also turned in a 1.69 ERA over 21 ⅓ playoff innings last season.
Even without Ohtani in the mix, the Dodgers’ rotation stands apart from everyone else’s.
The lineup is just as intimidating. Los Angeles ranks in the top five in runs, batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts are no longer in their absolute prime, but both remain central pieces. Freeman is still highly productive, and Betts has caught fire over the last month and has looked like his old self again.
Kyle Tucker has had a lost season, but he has finished as high as fifth in MVP voting before and is only 29, with three homers in his last five games. Teoscar Hernández has also gotten hot lately. Max Muncy is putting together an All-Star season, and players like Will Smith, Andy Pages and Tommy Edman get pushed into the background because of how deep this roster is.
Then there’s Ohtani, the headliner. He’s on the injured list with lingering knee and biceps injuries, but Dave Roberts said when Ohtani went on the IL that he would still be playing if it were the postseason.
A healthy version of Ohtani at the top of the order is what made the Dodgers look like the force they were last October. They could still win without him, but it gets a lot harder.
If he gets right over the final weeks of the regular season, that changes everything.
For the Dodgers, simply getting into October is never the point. That part is routine. The real season starts now, and this group has the kind of experience that can flatten pressure instead of feeding it.
“The easy answer is to say it sucks,” Betts said last year when I asked about the pressure. “But honestly, it's a blessing.
There are 750 ballplayers and I'm pretty sure all 750 would want to be in the same shoes, knowing that you're the favorites to win the World Series pretty much every year. Hardly anybody can say that.
So it's a blessing that we lean into. Yeah, it does suck to know that if we don't win, everybody considers us a failure and obviously that's not fair because there's no possible way we could win the World Series every year.
That doesn't even logically make sense, so it kind of is what it is and it's outside perception -- outside pressure put on us.”
Not long ago, the Dodgers were defined by postseason disappointment, with 2020 standing out as the odd exception. That label has been replaced by something much more dangerous: a team that has already won twice in a row and doesn’t seem interested in stopping there. Three in a row would settle the dynasty talk and then some.
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