Dodgers Clinch National League West Division Championship

“I don’t know if you can get wiser from failing all the time”. He is six strikeouts away from 300.

“You never know when it’s the last one”, Kershaw said. “We’ve still got something to play for”. It’s kind of a sigh of relief. I still believe, I just don’t believe we’ll play any more baseball for this season after Sunday.

The Dodgers will be making a third consecutive trip to the postseason, a first for the franchise, and have won their 14th NL West crown in total. Next on the agenda is getting to their first World Series in 27 years, but they have to take it incrementally, of course.

After Kershaw got Kelby Tomlinson to ground out for the final out of the game, the Dodgers spilled out of their dugout to mob Kershaw in the center of their long-awaited celebration. They all began hugging and dancing on the mound. “They are tough to beat”. You could see guys get refocused as the game went on tonight, not worrying about ‘What if’s.

Hernandez homered in the third inning, and Ruggiano and Ellis went back-to-back in the sixth, running the Dodgers’ season total to 184, which leads the league. Starting pitcher Madison Bumgarner allowed five hits and four runs, three earned, while striking out six over 5.2 innings to take the loss and fall to 18-9 for the season.

Andre Ethier and A.J. Ellis drove in four of the team’s eight runs. However, the Dodgers still receive all the hype and are thought to have the better pitching staff. On paper they do with a lower earned run average, more strikeouts, lower opponent batting average and fewer bases on balls.

The Giants loss ended their bid for consecutive World Series championships, and continued a pattern of failure after championship winning seasons.

– The Dodgers returned the favor in 1993 by dominating the Giants on the last day of the season to keep the 103 win Giants out of the playoffs by one game to the Atlanta Braves again.

San Francisco Giants’ Trevor Brown (56) hits a double to score two runs against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the second inning of a baseball game Monday, September 28, 2015, in San Francisco.

“It’s a fun mix, it’s a talented mix and hopefully it’s the right mix”, Kershaw said. They sent speedster Dee Gordon to Miami to improve their depth and to get the piece to acquire Howie Kendrick from the Los Angeles Angels. And last night’s performance was a pretty good example of what he’s been up to lately.

“They didn”™t replace Ned Colletti with Andrew Friedman to win the NL West. They didn”™t trade one-time franchise cornerstone Matt Kemp to reach an NL division series.

The Los Angeles Angels moved into second, half a game ahead of the Houston Astros by notching their seventh straight win by downing the Oakland A’s 8-1, while the Astros gave up a lead and lost at Seattle 6-4. The best case scenario was for Aoki to serve as a pinch-hitter during the Giants’ regular-season-ending series against the Colorado Rockies if the games had a bearing on the National League West race.

And they did so in impressive, and satisfying, fashion with a dominant shutout win over their ancient rival, the San Francisco Giants.