CINCINNATI –– When Dave Roberts gathered the Dodgers on Monday night, raising a champagne glass to toast their 14th consecutive season clinching a playoff berth, the manager delivered what has become a familiar message for the two-time defending champions over the last several years.

“Baseball is hard,” Roberts said.

“Nothing is guaranteed,” he insisted.

Then, the veteran skipper acknowledged an undeniable truth about the team’s 2026 performance –– but with a hopeful twist about what it could mean for their chances of completing a World Series three-peat.

“The thing for me that I’m really encouraged about with you guys is, we’re not even close to playing the baseball that we’re gonna play,” Roberts said. “And to be where we’re at right now … that says a lot about us.”

Another familiar grind of a regular season, that the Dodgers are confident can culminate in a familiar flourish of October glory.

“The best,” Roberts said, “has to be yet to come.”

Three days later, the Dodgers took another triumphant step toward defending their back-to-back championships, beating the Cincinnati Reds 8-2 at Great American Ball Park on Thursday to clinch their 13th National League West division crown in the last 14 years.

Unlike Monday night, when Roberts’ speech was the highlight of their subdued playoff-clinching celebration, the Dodgers let loose in the wake of Thursday’s victory.

Sheets of plastic covered the clubhouse walls. Boxes of sparkling wine sat on the ready in the ballpark tunnel. And, clad in division-title hats and T-shirts, they popped bottles and showered each other in beer to recognize the completion of their main regular-season priority.

“It’s a big deal. It’s not easy,” Roberts said. “I think a lot of people think it’s easy, it’s a rite of passage. But it’s not easy to win a division when everyone is gunning for you, to keep everyone motivated to play over the course of 162. It’s something we’re all really proud of. But that’s not the end goal.”

Indeed, the only curve that these Dodgers will be graded on is wholly dependent upon whether they win another World Series.

Such is the expectation with their level of star power, roster depth and record-setting payroll (a whopping $431.9 million for luxury tax purposes, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts).

Such has been the objective since the first day of spring training, as they embarked on a bid to become the first team in NL history (and first in all of the majors since the 1998-2000 Yankees) to win three-consecutive championships.

Getting there, however, has once again taken them down an adversity-stricken road.

“We just haven’t been able to get the whole team on the same page kind of all year long,” said Max Muncy, the team’s longest-tenured player.

The splashy offseason signings of Kyle Tucker and Edwin Díaz haven’t panned out as hoped, with Tucker mired in a career-worst campaign (even amid a recent turnaround that continued with a four-hit performance Thursday, including a two-run blast for his fifth home run in the last 13 games) and Díaz on the postseason roster bubble as he prepares to return from a second injured list stint this weekend.

Their midseason trade for ace pitcher Tarik Skubal has turned from luxury to necessity, thanks to Shohei Ohtani’s ongoing injury saga and a sudden groin concern with fellow two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell.

For a second-straight season, their star-studded but steadily aging lineup has endured a second-half slump, reigniting fears of more lackluster postseason production.

For a team billed as baseball’s evil empire, the margins entering this October still feel perilously small.

“We’ve had years, regular seasons that have been far less stressful,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “We’ve definitely experienced some challenges along the way this year.”

Then again, the Dodgers have successfully navigated such daunting obstacles before.

During their decade-and-a-half-long run of dominance, they have watched five 100-win seasons peter out with playoff eliminations. Only in the last two years, when they slogged through relatively disappointing 98- and 93-win campaigns, did they find a way to win full-season championships.

That will be the blueprint again now. They are on pace for another sub-100-win season. They are likely to only be the No. 2 seed in the NL playoff picture. But, they are still confident Thursday will be only the first of many clubhouse celebrations in the next six weeks.

After winning another division without playing their best baseball, they’re hoping that –– once again –– the march to the playoffs will finally draw it out of them.

“I just always point to the experience,” Muncy said. “There’s no number or metric that will ever describe how important that is, to have a group of guys that know what it takes to get to this point. We have a ton of guys that just know what it takes. And there’s no replacing that.”