One Hundred Wins, One Last Sweep, and Now It Gets Serious

There was no reason for the Dodgers to turn Sunday afternoon into anything more than a leisurely stroll toward October. They had already secured the division, already secured the bye, and had nothing left to prove in San Francisco except perhaps that they could find one more way to irritate the Giants before leaving town.

Naturally, they waited until the 10th inning to do it.

Alex Call's two-out RBI double scored Miguel Rojas with the go-ahead run, Andy Pages followed with a three-run homer, and the Dodgers walked out of San Francisco with a 5-1 victory that completed a three-game sweep of the Giants and delivered their 100th win of the 2026 regular season.

One hundred wins.

Sixth time in the last decade.

A 49-32 road record, the best mark in the majors.

And, perhaps most appropriately, the Dodgers finished the regular season by beating San Francisco for the eighth consecutive time.

The final score, however, does a pretty good job of hiding how much patience was required to get there.

For nine innings, this was not exactly a game that demanded its own commemorative plaque. The Giants scored their only run in the second inning on Scott Bandura's first major-league RBI, and the Dodgers spent the afternoon trying to find the big hit that had eluded them through regulation.

Then the 10th arrived.

With Rojas starting the inning at second under the extra-inning rules, the Dodgers needed one big swing to break open what had been a 1-1 game. They got it from Call, whose double into left-center finally brought Rojas home.

San Francisco then intentionally walked Max Muncy.

That left Andy Pages.

That turned out to be a poor choice.

Pages deposited Duncan Davitt's next offering into the left-field seats for his 23rd homer of the season, transforming a tense 2-1 game into a 5-1 Dodgers victory and sending the Dodgers into October with a rather satisfying exclamation point.

It was also a fitting moment for Pages, who has spent much of the season reminding everybody that there is considerably more to his game than the occasional spectacular defensive adventure.

The Dodgers had enough pitching to keep the game within reach while the offense waited for its opportunity. Seven Los Angeles pitchers combined for 16 strikeouts, and Alex Vesia earned the victory. The bullpen did what it has been asked to do repeatedly throughout a season that has tested the depth chart from practically every direction: keep the door closed until somebody eventually finds the key.

Shohei Ohtani finished 1-for-3 as the designated hitter and completed his first three games back from the injured list. He went 5-for-21 after returning, with a double, an RBI and two walks against 10 strikeouts. That is hardly the sort of stretch anybody is going to confuse with an Ohtani hot streak, but the Dodgers have never really needed the regular season to provide a finished product. Saturday, Oct. 3, is the date that matters now.

And that was the overriding theme in the clubhouse afterward.

The Dodgers weren't celebrating 100 wins so much as acknowledging what it represented.

Eleven more.

Mookie Betts put the next phase in perspective.

“This is the time where you really have to come together. There's gonna be a lot of adversity and whatnot. It's something that we've all been doing together for a while now, and we'll get an opportunity to do it again.”

Miguel Rojas was even more direct.

“We're looking to win another 11 games for us to make history and do something really cool about our legacies and the city of LA.”

Freddie Freeman reduced the mathematics to its simplest form:

“11 more wins to go for us.”

Teoscar Hernández had the same destination in mind.

“We are gonna be ready for 11 more games and hopefully we can win another championship.”

And Dave Roberts perhaps summed up the entire afternoon with the fewest words.

“Now we've got the most important season coming up.”

That's the thing about 100 wins.

It is a spectacular number until the calendar turns to October, at which point it becomes merely the number sitting beside the Dodgers' name when the postseason bracket is printed.

The Dodgers finished 100-62, seven games better than last year's regular-season record before they went on to win their second consecutive World Series. They finished with the best road record in baseball, swept the Giants and now get to sit back and watch the Wild Card round determine which team will walk into Dodger Stadium on Saturday.

Philadelphia and Atlanta will determine who gets that privilege.

The Dodgers will have the luxury of watching from somewhere other than a dugout.

That is a significant difference from where this season could have been heading a couple of weeks ago. Instead of worrying about the Wild Card round, Los Angeles gets several days to reset, get healthy and decide which pieces belong where when the games become considerably less forgiving.

There will be plenty to discuss between now and Saturday. The rotation. The bullpen. Roki Sasaki. The lineup. Ohtani's return. The defensive decisions that become magnified in October. And, because this is the Dodgers, approximately 47 other things that will become urgent sometime between breakfast and the first pitch.

But for Sunday, there was only one more piece of business.

Beat the Giants.

Sweep the Giants.

Win No. 100.

Then get out of San Francisco.

Mission accomplished.

The Giants, meanwhile, finished 65-97 in Tony Vitello's first season as manager, and Vitello managed to make one final contribution to the 2026 rivalry by getting himself ejected in the third inning—his major-league-high seventh ejection of the season—after arguing a checked-swing call involving Betts.

Even on the final day, San Francisco found a way to make sure somebody was yelling at somebody.

The Dodgers simply saved their yelling for October.

Now comes the part everybody has been waiting for.

Eleven more wins.

The first one comes Saturday in Los Angeles.

And this time, nobody is leaving runners on base because there isn't going to be another game tomorrow to fix it.