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.
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.
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)
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.