In the final week of a regular season that at times felt more like a battle of attrition, the Dodgers beat their closest rivals, the Padres, twice in three games at home to clinch the National League West. Then they swept the Rockies to finish with the best record in baseball.
That ended the regular season on quite the high note, and set up the Dodgers to have home-field advantage in every series they play in October.
Batter of the week
After Shohei Ohtani won National League player of the week during his milestone week by hitting .500 with a 1.668 OPS, he followed that up by hitting over .500 in the season’s final week, and even made an improbable late run at the batting title, which would have clinched the first triple crown in the circuit since 1937.
Ohtani in the season’s final week drove in the go-ahead run in the division clincher, passed Ichiro Suzuki for most steals in a season by a player born in Japan, broke the team record for extra-base hits in a season, and was the first major leaguer with 400 total bases in a season since 2001.
Dating back to September 15 in Atlanta, Ohtani had 31 hits in 61 at-bats over his final 14 games of the regular season, of which the Dodgers won 11, hitting .508/.559/.984 with seven home runs, eight doubles, and 11 stolen bases.
He ended his sublime first season with the Dodgers with 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases.
Ohtani was named Dodgers batter of the week in this space in nine of 28 weeks in his first season in Los Angeles.
