A DIVISION ALL BOTTLED UP

Loads of adversity can't keep Dodgers from taking another NL West crown

- JACK HARRIS

YOSHINOBU YAMAMOTO lets loose some of the bubbly as the Dodgers celebrate their 12th NL West title in the last 13 years after a win over the Diamondbacks.

Photographs by CHRIS CODUTO Getty Images

It was not supposed to be this difficult. It was not expected to feel so frustrating.

Six months ago, the question was not whether the Dodgers would win the National League West, but how far out of the water they'd blow the competition. It wasn't whether they'd enter October in position to defend their World Series title, but if they could set a single-season wins record along the way.

"Everyone," first baseman Freddie Freeman recalled, "was talking about our 'superteam.'"

What played out instead, of course, was a disappointing regular season relative to the club's lofty preseason expectations. The team will not win 100 games, let alone the 120 that some predicted ahead of the year.

It will not have a bye for the first round of the playoffs, having limped through much of the second half of the schedule.

It did not realize the full potential of its $400-million roster, hampered by starting pitching injuries early in the year, bullpen implosions down the stretch and an extended funk from the lineup in the middle of the summer. It did not play like the star-studded juggernaut or villainous evil empire or ascendant dynastic power the rest of the baseball world had labeled it to be.

"This is not the route we envisioned," Freeman said. "It hasn't been easy," manager Dave Roberts added. Now, however, none of that matters anymore. Because as far as the regular season is concerned, the team checked the only box that matters.