CINCINNATI — The ticket arrived quietly, as it seems to every September in Los Angeles now.
Tarik Skubal left Great American Ball Park after throwing seven scoreless innings, striking out nine while allowing three hits and one walk. By then, the Dodgers were already doing the arithmetic that made it official: for the 14th consecutive year, they were headed to the postseason.
No team in baseball history had achieved that before. Not even the Atlanta Braves, whose 1991–2005 dynasty under Bobby Cox set the previous record. On Monday night, Los Angeles matched it with a 4–1 victory over the Cincinnati Reds.
“Fourteen straight,” manager Dave Roberts said in the visiting clubhouse. “That’s a lot of different rosters, a lot of different players who gave everything to this organization. Tonight’s for all of them.”
What made the moment worth examining was not just the number. It was how they got there. Shohei Ohtani has not thrown a pitch since July 3, held out of the rotation with right biceps tightness the organization is carefully managing. Freddie Freeman is on the injured list too, the nature of his ailment communicated with the deliberate vagueness the Dodgers have long perfected. The two largest contracts in franchise history, representing roughly $1.4 billion combined, watched from the IL as a pitcher acquired six weeks ago from Detroit turned in his best start in a Los Angeles uniform.
Skubal won the American League Cy Young Award in both 2024 and 2025 for the Tigers before the Dodgers acquired him on August 2. He has gone 3-2 with a 2.52 ERA in eight starts since the trade, Fox Sports noted. He has not looked like a rental. He has looked like the front of a rotation.
“It’s hard to say it ever feels routine,” third baseman Max Muncy told reporters after the game, “but it is the expectation here. I always laugh whenever we clinch a postseason spot. We just do a nice little toast.”
The toast was indeed quiet. The Dodgers filed out of the dugout for high-fives and returned to work. There is still a fifth consecutive NL West title to chase, with their magic number standing at three after Monday’s result and thirteen division titles in the last fourteen seasons, and the postseason rotation is a calculation that sharpens over the next several weeks.
That rotation is formidable without Ohtani on the mound. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who earned World Series MVP honors last October, is 13-8 with a 2.62 ERA in 172 innings this season. Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow are healthy after injury-limited first halves. The three of them were already something. Skubal, two Cy Young trophies from his time in Detroit, made them something else.
The 1991-to-2005 Braves won 14 consecutive division titles under Cox. The 1994 work stoppage denied baseball a World Series champion that year, but Atlanta still won the NL East. The Braves took one championship across the entire run, the 1995 title against Cleveland. The Dodgers arrive at the same number with a different résumé: back-to-back World Series rings in 2024 and 2025, and a roster that believes a third is within reach if the names on the injured list clear in time, according to Bleacher Report.
Whether Ohtani returns to the mound before October is the question hanging over everything. The Dodgers have not provided a timeline. In September, that silence means October is both a real possibility and a real concern, possibly the same concern.
Back-to-back champions pressing for three-peats rarely announce themselves in September. The Kansas City Chiefs, who opened their NFL season with a 31-17 dismantling of the Las Vegas Raiders last week, operate inside the same scrutiny, where the baseline expectation has shifted from whether they can make the postseason to what will stop them from winning it. The Dodgers are baseball’s version of that question.
For Tucker, Freeman’s absence has created an opportunity he has converted. He is hitting .281 with 27 home runs and playing the Gold Glove-caliber defense that made him a finalist in the American League when he was in Houston. As Los Angeles wrote its record-tying chapter in Cincinnati on Monday, it was Tucker who wrote the first line, and Skubal who wrote the next seven.
What the final chapter looks like depends on things not yet known. Ohtani’s arm. Freeman’s readiness. Which version of this team arrives for October’s opening round. The Dodgers have clinched 14 consecutive times. They know the difference between a September certificate and a November ring. Right now, they have the certificate. The ring remains the hard part.
