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LOS ANGELES — With their fourth consecutive division championship now secured, the Dodgers earned a berth in the National League Division Series, where they will play the Washington Nationals in the first round of the 2016 MLB playoffs.
The runaway Cubs already clinched the best record in the National League, which means they will host the NL Wild Card Game winner in their NLDS. That leaves the National League West and National League East to match up in the other NLDS.
The Dodgers clinched the NL West with a walk-off win over the Rockies on Sunday.
Washington clinched the NL East on Saturday night.
Both National League Division Series begin on Friday, Oct. 7. Where the Dodgers and Nationals play first is yet to be decided.
Washington (91-64) leads the Dodgers (90-66) by 1½ games, but Los Angeles owns the tiebreaker by winning five of their six games in the regular season. The Dodgers need 8 of 13 outcomes to go their way the rest of the regular season to secure home field advantage in the NLDS.
Manager Dave Roberts downplayed home field advantage as a goal on Saturday.
"For us, the focus is just to win every game,” Roberts said. “If we clinch this thing, we'll have three games at home or two games at home. We just want to play good baseball going into the postseason.”
This is the second playoff meeting between these two franchises. The other was the 1981 NLCS, when the Dodgers beat the Montreal Expos in the full five games thanks to a ninth-inning home run in Game 5 by Rick Monday.
The NLDS is a best-of-5 series played in a 2-2-1 format, with off days built in for travel between Games 2 and 3, and between Games 4 and 5.
The NLDS will be televised by Fox Sports 1 and MLB Network, with game times yet to be determined.
2016 NLDS schedule
Game 1: Friday, Oct. 7 (Fox Sports 1 or MLB Network)
Game 2: Saturday, Oct. 8 (Fox Sports 1 or MLB Network)
Game 3: Monday, Oct. 10 (Fox Sports 1 or MLB Network)
Game 4*: Tuesday, Oct. 11 (Fox Sports 1)
Game 5*: Thursday, Oct. 13 (Fox Sports 1)
*if necessary