SAN DIEGO — This is over.
Like, over-over.
With a 4-2 victory over the Padres on Sunday at Petco Park, the Dodgers extended their division lead over their little brothers to a season-high 10 games.
The Dodgers won’t say it, so I will: They won the National League West title over the weekend, their 14th division crown in 15 years.
In reality, that was already decided before the Dodgers traveled down to Port Loser to take two of three games from the Padres.
A cursory glance at the Petco Park stands revealed to what extent.
Unlike in recent years, the stadium was overtaken by fans in Dodger blue.
San Diego is intimately familiar with failure, and the people here knew better than to invest their hopes in a team with no chance.
How right they were.
The Dodgers did everything but stick a Uniqlo flag in the mound at Dodger Stadium South, overcoming a Roki Sasaki stinker in the series opener Friday to take the remaining two games.
Manager Dave Roberts didn’t want to make too much of the standings at this stage of the season but acknowledged a lead of this size meant something. The last time the Dodgers were ahead by as many games in the NL West was at the end of the 2023 season when they were 16 games in front of the second-place Diamondbacks.
“It says a lot about what we’ve done,” Roberts said.
When the Dodgers visited the Padres in the middle of last month, they departed with a 1 ½-game lead.
“Right now, I think it’s a sign that we’ve kind of stayed the course, doing a lot of things well,” Roberts said.
Roberts called on his team to remain on course. The Dodgers open a three-game series against the Athletics in Sacramento on Monday and will face the Padres again in a four-game series at Dodger Stadium that starts on Thursday.
There’s no reason to believe the Dodgers will crumble over the next week — or at any other point this season.
Powered by a three-homer, nine-run sixth inning, they scored 15 runs Saturday. Their collective plate discipline won them the game Sunday. Freddie Freeman drew a bases-loaded walk to force in the go-ahead run in the fifth inning, and Mookie Betts followed that up with a two-run single.
Betts looks as if he’s breaking out of a two-year slump, batting .368 with five homers in his last 14 games.
The Dodgers are also expected to welcome back Teoscar Hernández from the injured list Monday. Hernández missed the last month with a strained hamstring.
With two more wins, Roberts will have 1,000 in his managerial career. The milestone should break up the monotony of a season that is still only two games beyond the halfway point.
The Padres are heading in the opposite direction.
The last time they were in first place was May 18, and since then, they are 14-21. The Dodgers are 25-11 over the same period.
The Padres’ shortcomings have caught up to them, and those weaknesses were on display against the Dodgers.
The Padres rank last in the major leagues in runs scored, batting average and OPS. While they have an elite bullpen anchored by closer Mason Miller and Adrian Morejon, their starting pitching is highly suspect. Their starting pitchers are fourth from the bottom in the majors in innings pitched and fourth from the bottom in the NL in ERA.
Their roster construction explained why the Dodgers knew they had to score in the fifth inning of the series finale when they had starter Michael King in trouble.
“We know we gotta beat the starters,” Freeman said. “As an offense, that’s what we knew we had to do in this game. We know who’s at the back end of that bullpen, so getting the lead was huge. We take [Miller] out of the game if we got the lead, and we were able to do that the last couple days.”
Roberts wanted to temper any celebrations.
“We see these guys in four days,” Roberts said.
The series will be important for Sasaki, who will look to recover from a game in which he reverted to his underwhelming early-season form.
But otherwise, the rematch with the Padres won’t mean any more than any series against any other team.
Because the NL West is already the Dodgers’.