SAN FRANCISCO — The Dodgers needed extra innings to finish the job, but they finished it in style. Los Angeles broke a 1-1 tie with four runs in the tenth to beat the Giants 5-1, capping a three-game sweep, clinching the franchise’s 100th win of the season, and closing the book on the regular season with a first-round bye already secured. It took ten innings and a full bullpen effort to get there, but few endings could have fit the year better.
Alex Call and Andy Pages Deliver in the Tenth
With a runner on second to start the inning under the extra-innings format, Miguel Rojas came around to score the go-ahead run on an Alex Call double to left, snapping the 1-1 tie.
San Francisco intentionally walked Max Muncy to get to Andy Pages, and the decision backfired immediately. Pages drove a fly ball into the left-field seats for a three-run homer, his 23rd of the season, and turned a nervy extra-innings battle into a comfortable 5-1 win before the Dodgers even took the field for the bottom half.
A Pitching Staff That Went the Distance
With the regular season winding down, Los Angeles leaned on its full bullpen and got everything it needed. Jack Dreyer opened, Justin Wrobleski followed with two scoreless innings, and Roki Sasaki, Edwin Díaz, Bobby Miller, Alex Vesia and Evan Phillips each took a turn after that, with Miller alone striking out five over two innings in the middle of the game.
Seven different arms combined to strike out 16 Giants hitters and allow just one run over ten innings, with Vesia picking up the win for his work in the ninth. It was a fitting final tune-up for a staff that will lean on exactly this kind of depth once October begins, and a reminder that this bullpen can go as many innings as a game demands.
100 Wins and a First-Round Bye
The number itself says most of what needs to be said. The Dodgers finished the regular season at 100-62, a milestone that puts this group in rare company in franchise history, and they’ll open the postseason with a first-round bye already locked up after Atlanta’s collapse in the season’s final week.
It’s the reward for six months of sustained excellence, from a division title wrapped up weeks ago to a sweep in San Francisco that put an exclamation point on the whole thing.
A bye in October is never just a scheduling perk. It means extra rest for a pitching staff that’s about to be asked to carry this team through four rounds, and it means Los Angeles gets to watch the wild card round from home while everyone else fights just to get to where the Dodgers already are.
Miguel Rojas, Possibly for the Last Time
There’s a real chance Sunday was the final game of Miguel Rojas’ career, and it’s hard to imagine a more fitting way for it to happen. Rojas entered as a defensive substitution, drew a walk earlier in the game, and then stood on second base to start the tenth inning before scoring the run that put the Dodgers ahead for good.
Few players in this organization have meant more to the back-to-back championship runs than Rojas, a steady presence in the infield and in the clubhouse who has been part of the foundation for everything this era of Dodgers baseball has built. The stats never fully captured what he brought to this team, and if this really is it, he couldn’t have scripted a better final act than coming around to score the go-ahead run on the final day of the regular season.
Setting Sights on a Three-Peat
The Dodgers aren’t just defending a championship this October, they’re chasing history. A third straight title would make Los Angeles the first team to three-peat since the Lakers pulled it off under Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal in the early 2000s, and after 100 wins and a bye to open the bracket, this team is built to make a real run at it.
It’s been a season worth every bit of the attention it’s gotten, six months of dominant baseball capped by a walk-off-caliber finish on the final day. The bye buys a few extra days of rest before the postseason opens, and after a season this good, the Dodgers will take every bit of it before turning their attention to a three-peat nobody in this city has seen since Shaq and Kobe were doing it at Staples Center.
The regular season is over, the sweep in San Francisco is in the books, and everything from here on out is about October.