2025 National League Wild Card Series 1

2025 National League Wild Card Series

Los Angeles Dodgers 93 - 69 in the NL	2 - 0 Series Summary	Cincinnati Reds 83 - 79 in the NL

Overview[edit]

The Teams[edit]

Managers: Dodgers: Dave Roberts | Mets: Terry Francona

Dodgers

Reds

Umpires[edit]

Nick Mahrley, Lance Barrett, Quinn Wolcott, Alfonso Marquez (crew chief), Tripp Gibson and Ryan Additon

Series results[edit]

Game	Score	Date	Starters	Time (ET)
1	Cincinnati Reds 5 Los Angeles Dodgers 10	September 30	Hunter Greene (0-1) Blake Snell (1-0)	9:08 pm
2	Cincinnati Reds 4 Los Angeles Dodgers 8	October 1	Zack Littell (0-1) Yoshinobu Yamamoto (1-0)	9:08 pm

Results[edit]

Game 1 @ Dodger Stadium[edit]

Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
Reds	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	3	0	5	7	1
Dodgers	1	0	4	0	1	2	2	0	x	10	15	0
WP: Blake Snell (1-0); LP: Hunter Greene (0-1)
Home Runs: LA - Shohei Ohtani 2 (2), Teoscar Hernández 2 (2), Tommy Edman (1)

Attendance: 50,555

Of the four Wild Card Series games played that day, only this one escaped the common script of a low-scoring affair dominated by starting pitchers. Actually, the Dodgers' starting pitcher, Blake Snell, was true to form, keeping the Reds from scoring through the first six innings before tiring in the 7th. However, Cincinnati's Hunter Greene, who can be absolutely dominant certain days, was not in good form. That was apparent from the first batter for the Dodgers after Snell had retired the Reds in order in the top of the 1st, as Shohei Ohtani turned on a 100 mph four-seam fastball and sent it back on a line towards left field at 117 mph. The ball left the park in an instant and it was 1-0 Los Angeles. By the time the 3rd inning ended, that lead had grown to 5-0, and the game was over for all intents and purposes.

Apart from Ohtani's opening shot, the big blows came in the 3rd inning. Greene had sort of settled down after the initial homer, although it was tough going and the Dodgers placed runners in scoring position in both the 1st and 2nd innings. In the 3rd, however, he could not escape. He issued back-to-back walks to Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy with one out, then threw a wild pitch and on the next pitch hung a slider which Teoscar Hernández drove deep to left field for a three-run homer. And before Greene could get his bearings again, Tommy Edman homered as well, this one to right field, to make it 5-0. At that point, the Reds had gotten all of one hit and one walk off Snell, and the game looked like a complete mis-match. Greene got the final two outs of the inning, but his night's work was over as Scott Barlow took over on the mound in the 4th. Meanwhile, Snell again retired the Reds in order in the 4th and in the 5th. Barlow had struck out the side in the 4th and then retired the first two batters he faced in the 5th, but then gave way to Connor Phillips. He was greeted by Teoscar's second straight homer, then in the 6th, Kiké Hernandez singled and one out later it was Ohtani's turn to hit a second homer, this one a two-run shot off Phillips. That made the score, 8-0.

The Reds' bats finally stirred in the 7th, after three straight perfect innings by Snell. Austin Hays and Spencer Steer hit back-to-back singles after one out and Hays scored when Elly De La Cruz hit into a force out. Tyler Stephenson followed with a double to make it 8-2 but Snell then recorded the final out. However, Los Angeles replied immediately by scoring twice more in the 7th on singles by Alex Call and Ben Rortvedt, so that when the Reds mounted a bit of a rally against the Dodgers' shaky bullpen in the 8th, they were too far down for it to matter. Alex Vesia was the pitcher who got the ball with a 10-2 lead, but he allowed a walk and a single while recording just one out before giving way to Edgardo Henriquez. He walked Miguel Andujar to load the bases, and all three runners would eventually cross the plate on a bases-loaded walk, a single by Steer and another walk, to De La Cruz, this one issued by Jack Dreyer. The bases were still loaded, and the lead down to five runs, when Dreyer struck out Stephenson and got Ke'Bryan Hayes to hit a fly ball. There was no more scoring after that, although the Dodgers left the bases loaded against Graham Ashcraft in the 8th. It was Blake Treinen who got to close things out in the 9th, although it wasn't a save situation.

Game 2 @ Dodger Stadium[edit]

Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
Reds	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	4	6	1
Dodgers	0	0	1	2	0	4	1	0	x	8	13	3
WP: Yoshinobu Yamamoto (1-0); LP: Zack Littell (0-1)
Home Runs: none

Attendance: 50,465

The Dodgers were once again overwhelming favorites to win Game 2, and again the pitching match-up was a good part of that, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, one of the stars of their World Series win the year before and the most recent winner of the NL's Pitcher of the Month Award, facing off against journeyman Zack Littell. But in a surprising twist, it was the Reds who took the early lead, and the game was a toss-up until the 6th, when the Dodgers' steamroller got moving in earnest. Once again, an iffy performance from the Dodgers' bullpen made the final score appear closer than the game truly was, but the Dodgers completed the sweep and punched their ticket to the Division Series.

Things started to go wrong for Yamamoto with the second batter of the 1st inning, when he hit Spencer Steer with a pitch. It should have been only a small glitch, as he got the next batter, Gavin Lux, to ground into a force out, but Austin Hays hit a fly ball down the right field line which was eminently catchable but which clanked off Teoscar Hernández's glove and fell to the ground, with the runners ending up on second and third base. Rookie Sal Stewart was the next man up, and he singled to right for a 2-0 lead. Given normal defence, the game would still have been scoreless, and Yamamoto was true to form after that early snag, not giving up any other run in the remainder of his outing. Still, the unexpected early lead by Cincinnati made the next few innings more interesting.

Littell managed to keep out of trouble in his first two innings, working around a double by Mookie Betts in the 1st and hitting Andy Pages with a pitch in the 2nd, but the Dodgers got to him in the 3rd. Ben Rortvedt, starting at catcher because of an injury to All-Star Will Smith, led off with a double, advanced to third on a ground out by Shohei Ohtani, and scored on a single by Betts. In the 4th, Max Muncy led off with a single that deflected off 2B Matt McLain's glove, then scored on a one-out double by Kiké Hernández, wearing his postseason superman clothes once again (just before the hit, the television broadcast had shown a graphic depicting how Kiké had the second highest positive differential in OPS between the regular season and the postseason among all qualifying batters, trailing only Carlos Beltran). Nick Lodolo was already warming up in the Reds bullpen by then, but Littell faced another batter in Miguel Rojas and he singled to right to put L.A. in the lead. They would never surrender it. Lodolo came in to face Rortvedt, who laid down a bunt to move Rojas to second, but McLain was unable to field it cleanly, putting a second batter on. The Dodgers could have broken the game wide open at this point, but Lodolo got both Ohtani and Betts to fly out, and there was no more scoring in the inning.

Yamamoto was rolling along by now, retiring 13 straight batters between the 1st and the 6th, when T.J. Friedl hit a lead-off single. The score was still 3-2 at this point and the tension rose noticeably as both Steer and Lux followed with singles, loading the bases with nobody out. However, in one of the key plays of the game, Hays hit a ground ball straight at SS Betts, who fired home for the force out, and Yamamoto completed his escape by striking out Stewart and Elly De La Cruz in order. That was very deflating for the Reds, and became more so when the Dodgers did not waste their own opportunity against Nick Martinez in the bottom of the inning. This time, Kiké Hernández led things off with an infield single and moved to second on a ground out. Rortveldt then hit a ball to 1B Stewart, but he threw wildly to Martinez as he tried to cover first base, and both runners were safe. This time, the top of the order came through: Ohtani singled in a run, and Betts drove in another one with a double to make it 5-2. Freddie Freeman was issued an intentional walk to bring up Teoscar Hernández, but the big man came through with a two-run double and the game was now practically out of reach with the score 7-2. Tony Santillan replaced Martinez on the mound, and after issuing another intentional walk, to Muncy, to load the bases again, he got a couple of fly outs to end the inning, but not before the Dodgers had batted around and scored four runs.

Yamamoto issued a couple of walks in the 7th to give way to Blake Treinen, but he had done what was needed by then. Treinen recorded the final out of the inning, then the Dodgers added another run in the bottom of the frame, on a double by Betts that scored Rojas. It was now 8-2. The Reds scored a couple of runs in the 8th off Emmet Sheehan, who allowed four straight batters to reach after he took over and threw a wild pitch for good measure. After allowing the second run on a sacrifice fly, Sheehan gave way to Alex Vesia after getting two strikes on Will Benson. Vesia cleaned up the mess with a pair of strikeouts, the first victim being pinch-hitter Miguel Andujar, who completed Benson's at-bat. The Reds left the bases loaded for the second time, and a timely hit in either situation could have really changed the game. In the 9th, Japanese youngster Roki Sasaki, whose rookie season had been appropriately rocky, took the mound for the Dodgers with a four-run lead, but he was in good form, striking out the first two men he faced before getting Hays to line out to shortstop to end the game and the series.