Let’s address the elephant in the room: In a statistical sense, the 2025 Cincinnati Reds are the worst team to make the postseason in baseball’s history.
The 83-79 club, which slipped in at game No. 162, didn’t possess a hitter with more than 25 home runs or a batting average north of .270.
It also didn’t roster a pitcher with 15 wins nor 200 strikeouts.
If you’re a Mets fan, it probably stings to read that.
But the squeeze of eight wins in the final 11 games bid the backdoor Reds a field trip against a $350 million payroll in the Dodgers.
Reds vs. Dodgers odds, prediction
Los Angeles took the season series 5-1 and outscored Cincinnati by a margin of 30-15. The Dodgers hit a team average of .264 to the Reds’ .188 in those six games.
Ahead of Game 1, the Dodgers were -230 betting favorites to advance, which was Vegas’ most lopsided matchup perception in the wild-card round.
Terry Francona deploys Zack Littell (10-8, 3.81 ERA) for Game 2 on Wednesday. The right-hander is one of the game’s best in preventing walks, finishing with a 4.2% rate, which ranked within the top two percentiles.
The Dodgers walked the second-most times in MLB, but beyond that nugget, there is not much else to grab onto in backing Cincinnati.
Offensively, it amassed the 24th overall total in wRC+ in contrast to the Dodgers’ second.
On the mound, the Reds were No. 21 in xFIP, projecting 4.17. The Dodgers were top-five at 3.96.
Betting on Baseball?
Cincinnati made up for it in the field, ranking No. 7 in Defensive Efficiency Ratio, but the Dodgers still outperformed them at No. 2.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto (12-8, 2.49 ERA) serves the Reds some of the hardest pitches to make solid contact against this season. Yamamoto ranked only behind Zack Wheeler, Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal in xwOBA, which measures a hitter’s contact quality without the influence of defense and luck in the equation.
While Littell didn’t face Los Angeles, Yamamoto threw seven innings with nine strikeouts in a 5-2 victory against the Reds on July 28.
The Reds were the third-worst club overall in xwOBA, so there’s plenty of comfort in backing the Dodgers run line.
THE PLAY: Dodgers -1.5 (-130, BetMGM)
Why Trust New York Post Betting
Sean Treppedi handicaps the NFL, NHL, MLB and college football for the New York Post. He primarily focuses on picks that reflect market value while tracking trends to mitigate risk.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
