CINCINNATI — Longtime Dodger Max Muncy blinked away beer and champagne as he stepped away from his alcohol-doused SportsNet LA interview in the visiting locker room at Great American Ball Park. But he was a veteran of these celebrations, too.

He stepped right into the next interview without missing a beat.

"It's not something that I ever take for granted," Muncy said after the Dodgers clinched the division Thursday with an 8-2 win against the Reds. "This moment is as special as it gets. You get to pop bottles with the boys, celebrating. This is a long season."

Sheets of plastic had been place in the Great American Ball Park visiting clubhouse since the day before, attached to the ceiling with binder clips and folded up above the lockers, ready to be unfurled after the game for the Dodgers' celebration.

With their victory Thursday, the Dodgers clinched the NL West division for the 13th time in 14 years. It was never much of a contest. The Dodgers maintained their division lead at nine games even after the Padres beat the Rockies Thursday afternoon.

"What's funny is Los Angeles has always been looked at, as far as sports, a Laker town," manager Dave Roberts said this week. "I don't know, I think we might have market share now in Los Angeles."

They are guaranteed, at the very least, home-field advantage in a wild-card series. The next week and a half, they'll be playing for a first-round bye, straight into the National League Division Series.

"The important thing is I feel really good about this team and what it's capable of doing in October when experience matters," president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. "Even beyond that, how smart our guys are — they know what it takes. So getting us in position to have the bye and then focus on winning 11 games."

On Thursday, however — as the offense surged from top to bottom and the bullpen-day pitching staff, headlined by Justin Wrobleski's three perfect innings and Landon Knack's four scoreless innings, quieted the Reds offense — was a chance for the Dodgers to celebrate what they'd done so far in the season.

"The way we finished these guys off today to win a four-game series to clinch the division," Roberts said, "that is something I know we can build on."

As wide of a lead as the Dodgers have in the division race, their season hasn't been smooth sailing.

At the beginning of the year, the rotation bore the brunt of the injury bug, with left-hander Blake Snell and right-hander Tyler Glasnow missing months of the season.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers' two big offseason acquisitions didn't make nearly the impact they were expected to.

Right fielder Kyle Tucker — who continued his recent hot streak with a single, two doubles and a home run on Thursday — is still on pace for the worst full season of his career. And reliever Edwin Díaz not only has spent most of the season on the IL but lost the closer spot with poor performance when he was healthy. He's scheduled to be activated off the IL (neck inflammation) Friday.

So, the Dodgers made a splash at the trade deadline, acquiring two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal. He's fit right in, making a now Shohei Ohtani-less projected postseason rotation still the most daunting the sport has seen in decades.

What was supposed to be Ohtani's first full season of two-way duties since joining the Dodgers turned into a second-half injury-management debacle. The Dodgers still hope he'll be back from the 15-day IL (right biceps and left knee injuries) before the end of the regular season.

He's set to progress to hitting off coach-thrown batting practice this week, Roberts said.

"Overall, body feels normalish," Roberts said. "... There's no pain. He's doing everything he needs to do. I still don't know when time to [return to] play is, but everything that I hear is really positive."

Injuries have hit the position-player group hard down the stretch, with center fielder Andy Pages (fractured left hand) — likely to return during the Dodgers' upcoming homestand — and catcher Dalton Rushing (right elbow) also on the IL, and first baseman Freddie Freeman (right knee tendinitis) and infielder Miguel Rojas (right shoulder soreness) playing through ailments.

The rotation also isn't out of the woods. Snell left his start Wednesday with what the team called left groin tightness, and it remains to be seen if he'll make another regular-season start. Right-hander Roki Sasaki is working back from a blister on his middle finger and is penciled in to return from the IL next week against the Padres.

Despite all of that, the Dodgers have already won 93 games — matching their 2025 season total — with nine games to go.

"It's been the same thing the last couple years," Muncy said. "We've had guys go down, we've had guys step up in their place — they kind of take over the role, and they keep moving on, keep the goalposts moving. That's all that we ask, and we've been able to survive a lot. I just think we're resilient as a team."

Ideally, that means the best is yet to come. The team started aiming for a three-peat as soon as they won the 2025 World Series.

"We've seen how difficult it is to repeat," Friedman said. "It's even more difficult to do it three in a row. We know everyone is coming for us and we get that. So for us it's about putting our heads down and doing everything we can to win — hopefully it's 11 games in October. And I will bet a lot on the mindset and the focus of this group to do everything they can to put us in the best position to do it. But it is challenging. I think our ability to take one inning at a time, one pitch at a time is something that separates us."

One celebration at a time. And Thursday's was gleeful, despite the long flight back to L.A. looming ahead.

Forty minutes after the game ended, players were sill huddled around the cases of beer in the center of the plastic-clad locker room, music bumping.

At one point in the postgame festivities, they cleared a lane for assistant athletic trainer Yosuke Nakajima to tarp-slide across the room.

"That's part of the reason why I signed here, to be able to win every year and give ourselves a chance to win every year," shortstop Mookie Betts shouted above the noise. "There's a reason why we play the game. I think that's why people love coming to L.A., because you get an opportunity to win."

As Skubal addressed reporters in a corner, he had to pause his praise of the Dodgers' welcoming team culture because his new team's "Scooby Doo Pa Pa" chants had drowned out his voice.

"First of many," he said. "... This is checking a box, and once we get to postseason baseball and doing all that stuff, I think it's going to be a ton of fun."

©2026 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.