The regular season doesn't end until Sunday, but the road to the World Series on the National League side of the bracket will head through Los Angeles. On Tuesday, the Dodgers clinched home-field advantage through the NL Championship Series by virtue of the Atlanta Braves losing their game against the Kansas City Royals.
The Braves lost, so the Dodgers have clinched the No. 1 seed in the NL.
— Eric Stephen (@ericstephen) September 25, 2019
LA hosts the wild card winner (Nationals have already clinched one spot, and the Brewers have a magic number of 1) to start the NLDS
The Dodgers entered Tuesday with a 100-56 record, or with five fewer losses than the then-96-61 Braves. Because the Dodgers won the season series against the Braves, Atlanta's only way of securing home-field advantage was to post the best record outright. Obviously that would have entailed running the table (with the Dodgers losing out), and that didn't happen.
The Dodgers still have something to play for the rest of the way, and that's home-field advantage throughout the entire postseason. Los Angeles entered Tuesday with two more losses than the Houston Astros, and one more than the New York Yankees (though the Yankees had two more wins).
As it stands, the Dodgers figure to host the winner of the Milwaukee Brewers-Washington Nationals play-in contest, and the winner of that series will then play the victor of the St. Louis Cardinals-Braves matchup. It's worth noting that the last NL wild card team to advance past the Divisional Series was the 2015 Chicago Cubs, who lost in the NLCS.
