CINCINNATI –– There was no champagne shower. No dogpile on the mound. No raucous celebration of what, for most other clubs, would be a triumphant accomplishment.

Instead, on the day the Dodgers officially clinched a playoff berth for an MLB-record-tying 14th-straight season, they simply strolled out of the dugout for routine high-fives on the field in the wake of a 4-1 win over the Cincinnati Reds, then shared a brief toast in the locker room to recognize the moment.

 “It’s not a given, we don’t take it for granted,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said. “But it is the expectation here.”

Indeed, getting to the playoffs was never the goal for the two-time defending champions.

And over the rest of the regular season, there is more work to do to bolster their three-peat bid.

First and foremost is locking up the National League West division, something the Dodgers could do this week with their magic number now down to three.

While that will come with a more formal clubhouse party, the even bigger priority is securing a top-two NL playoff seed and a bye through the best-of-three wild card round to open the playoffs.

Though the club navigated that elongated path last year, an extra week of rest will be paramount for the team now.

Already, the Dodgers’ lineup has been without Shohei Ohtani, Andy Pages and Dalton Rushing on the injured list. This week brought renewed uncertainty to the health status of Freddie Freeman (who missed his third game in the last week Monday with a right knee injury) and Miguel Rojas (who aggravated a shoulder injury on a diving play Sunday, but was able to play through soreness on Monday).

On the pitching side, more questions abound, especially after breakout right-handed reliever Edgardo Henriquez hit the injured list on Monday with a back problem, and $69 million closer Edwin Díaz suffered a five-run implosion during a triple-A rehab outing this weekend that put his chances of making the playoff roster in doubt.

“I mean, it’s always helpful in the sense of giving your guys a break to reset,” manager Dave Roberts said when asked of the importance of getting a first-round bye this year. “But given all the tax and where our guys are health-wise, to get that week would be huge. So we still got to play well to finish out the season to get to that point.”

Monday was a positive step in that direction, at least, with the Dodgers rebounding from a frustrating series defeat in Miami over the weekend.

Tarik Skubal turned in his best (and first scoreless) start with the club since arriving at the trade deadline, blanking the Reds over seven dominant innings with only three hits allowed and nine strikeouts.

“It’s different than anything I’ve experienced, for sure,” Skubal joked of the Dodgers’ subdued postseason celebration. “But I think it just speaks to the people in this room and what they expect out of this team.”

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Kyle Tucker, meanwhile, continued his slow but increasingly steady late-season turnaround by opening the scoring with a solo home run in the second, his fourth long ball in the last 10 games.

Teoscar Hernández kept up his resurgent September performance by following a walk from Tucker in the fourth with a two-run blast to give the Dodgers some breathing room.

“I don’t think we’ve been able yet in the season to [have] the whole group healthy and performing the way we know we can perform,” Hernández said. “But at the same time, it’s baseball. Things like that are going to happen. So just have to support each other the way we’ve been doing this year, the past year, in the hard moments, and just keep going.”

Roberts echoed similar sentiments in his postgame address to the team.

“The message was, ‘We haven’t come close to playing our best baseball yet,’ and here we are with 12 games left, getting a ticket to the postseason,” he recounted. “That says a lot about this entire organization … To do it every single year when you’re expected to do this says something about the entire organization.”

Just getting, of course, won’t be enough.

And to maximize their chances of a deep run, the Dodgers will have to lock up a No. 2 seed for which they currently hold a 3-1/2 game lead over the Braves.

“It’s hard to say it ever feels routine,” Muncy said, “but it is the expectation here.”