2025 Cincinnati Reds

2025 Cincinnati Reds / BR Team Page

Record: 83-79, Finished 3rd in NL Central Division (2025 NL) Wild Card

Managed by Terry Francona

Coaches: Kyle Arnsberg, Freddie Benavides, Collin Cowgill, J.R. House, Derek Johnson, Simon Mathews, Brad Mills, Mike Napoli, Alex Pelaez, Will Remillard, Matt Tracy and Chris Valaika

Ballpark: Great American Ball Park

History, Comments, Contributions

The 2025 Cincinnati Reds came into the season with a lot of optimism, after flirting with .500 the previous two years while bringing up a number of excellent young players who were destined to become the face of the team. Following the dismissal of long-time manager David Bell the previous season, they lured the great Terry Francona out of retirement to take the helm and many observers felt that he was the person to mold a collection of very talented players into a winning squad.

However, the climb to greatness hit a snag during the Reds' first few games of the season, as they became the first team since the 1960 Philadelphia Phillies to lose three consecutive games by a 1-0 score. The first two such losses came at the hands of the Texas Rangers on April 1-2, with the Rangers' Nathan Eovaldi tossing a "Maddux" in the first game. They then visited the Milwaukee Brewers on April 3rd, and it was Nestor Cortes, who had been victimized by three home runs on his first three pitches of the game in his first start of the season, who manhandled them, with six innings of one-hit ball. The only consolation was that at least their starting pitchers were doing well, having given up 0 or 1 run in their last four games - even if wins were hard to come by.

In contrast, on April 20th, they had no trouble scoring runs as they came within two runs of the franchise record set in 1911 when they defeated the Baltimore Orioles by a 24-2 score on Easter Sunday at Camden Yards. No Reds team had scored that many runs or collected 25 hits in this century, as one had to go back to May 19, 1999 and a 24-12 win over the Colorado Rockies in which they had had 28 hits in a Coors Field special to find similar numbers. They had 38 batters reach base for a franchise record, and while the early story was SS Elly De La Cruz, who made a tremendous leaping catch of a liner by Jackson Holliday when the game still close in the 2nd, and then led off the top of the 3rd with a homer off Charlie Morton, it was the bottom two hitters in the line-up who caused the most damage. 3B Noelvi Marte went 5 for 7 with a grand slam and C Austin Wynns victimized his former team with a 6 for 7 day, tying the franchise record for hits in a nine-inning game. Together, the pair accounted for 5 runs and 13 RBIs. Another former Oriole, DH Austin Hays, added four hits and four runs to the tally.

The Reds spent almost the entire season at the edge of the postseason race, most of the time on the outside looking in, as there was effectively one wild card spot in play, with the second-place in both their own division and in the NL West almost assured of taking the first two spots. The contest was therefore between the Reds, the team that would finish third in the West (the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Francisco Giants were in lockstep for most of the season), all of them looking to the NL East, as they would need to dislodge the second-place team in that division. At first, the Philadelphia Phillies seemed to be the team to beat, as the New York Mets built a comfortable lead in the early going, but the situation reversed itself in mid-June, when the Phillies pushed the Mets aside. At the All-sTar break, the Mets seemed to be fully in control, because while they were a half game back of Philly, they were at 55-42, well on their way to qualifying for the postseason. But things went badly in Queens, NY, as the Mets posted a losing record in both August and September, allowing the Reds to gradually creep closer. The two teams were tied heading into the final day of the season on September 28th with identical records of 83-78. However, the Reds had gone 4-2 in head-to-head meetings between the two teams after Cincinnati had won two of three at home in early September, so they held the all-important tiebreaker. It was the race no one seemingly wanted to win: Cincinnati had also been below .500 in August, with a record of 12-15, but they were just good enough in the final month, going 14-10. That included losing to the Milwaukee Brewers, 4-2, in Game 162, but they snuck into the postseason as the third and final wild card team when the Mets also lost, even more ignominiously, when they were shut out by the Miami Marlins, 4-0. It was Cincinnati's first postseason trip since being swept and held scoreless in both games of their Wild Card Series in the anomalous COVID season of 2020. Their reward for being the last team to survive the game of musical chairs was to head to Los Angeles, CA to face the Los Angeles Dodgers, the NL West winners and defending World Series champions, in a Wild Card Series in which they were considered rank underdogs.

Awards and Honors

• All-Star: Andrew Abbott and Elly De La Cruz
• NL Gold Glove: Ke'Bryan Hayes (3B)

Further Reading

• Mark Sheldon: "Reds' third straight 1-0 loss nearly unprecedented", mlb.com, April 3, 2025. [1]
• Mark Sheldon: "Elly's Superman impression helps spark historic 24-run rout", mlb.com, April 20, 2025. [2]
• Mark Sheldon: "Reds clinch playoff spot on final day of season, set to face Dodgers", mlb.com, September 28, 2025. [3]

2025 MLB season by team