Unless the Reds Do Something Wild, the NL Playoff Race Is Over

The Mets swept the Phillies this week, which made headlines for two reasons: First, the Mets have now won 10 straight against the Phillies at Citi Field, dating back to last September, and including Games 3 and 4 of last year’s NLDS. If the Phillies don’t win a game there in the playoffs, they don’t face the Mets in New York again until the last weekend of June 2026. A potential 21-month losing streak at a divisional rival is tough to swallow, though it’s good to see that everyone’s being super normal about it.

Second, it kept the NL East race alive. The Phillies entered this division matchup seven games up with 32 to play; had they won the series, they would’ve basically had the division title in the bag. As it stands now, they’re up five, with the Mets coming to Philadelphia for a four-game set in mid-September. The Phillies are still 3-to-1 favorites, according to our playoff odds, but it’s a real pennant race now.

But this sweep is most important for a reason that went a little under the radar. While the Mets were beating seven shades of you-know-what out of the Phillies, the Dodgers were doing the same to the Reds in Los Angeles.

In three games, the Dodgers outscored the Reds 18-4. They only trailed after four out of 51 half-innings in the series, and never by more than a single run. It was not the performance the Reds needed, especially since they entered the series a game and a half behind the Mets for the last NL Wild Card spot.

Cincinnati still had a lot of work to do, but with the Mets coming to Ohio for a three-game set at the end of next week, the Reds still controlled their own playoff destiny. That’s not the case anymore, as the pair of sweeps stretched New York’s lead to 4 1/2 games. When the sun rose on Thursday, the NL playoff standings looked like this:

The Reds had been nursing playoff odds in the teens since about mid-June, and on August 21, Cincinnati had an 18.4% chance of making the postseason. Since then, they’ve dropped six of seven, including the sweep at the hands of the Dodgers, and seen their playoff odds fall to 4.4%.

And while there’s still plenty to fight for in terms of seeding, including relatively close divisional races in the East and West, that’s basically sayonara for the 2025 NL pennant race. While the Reds are still technically alive, a sweep against New York next week is basically a must-have. Even then, it’s unlikely… actually, no need to guess, the Reds are now about a 30-to-1 long shot to make the playoffs.

It’s not even Labor Day yet. How unusual is it to have a league’s playoff spots spoken for this early? Well, we’ve got daily playoff odds on this site dating back to 2014, so let’s look. Let me define some terms first: The first team out is not the team that’s closest to a playoff spot, it’s the team with the highest playoff odds that would be in line to miss the playoffs. And the “>10% Outsiders” column is the number of teams outside the current playoff bracket that have 10% odds or more of making the postseason:

If the Reds stay under 10% playoff odds through Monday, they’d be the most hopeless first runner up on September 1 in at least the past decade. Even the Royals, whose footing is comparatively solid at 14.6% playoff odds, have the sixth-lowest odds out of 24 entries on this list.

And there are a couple mitigating factors I want to point out: The first team out in the 2019 AL was the Red Sox at 8.5%, but Oakland and Cleveland were tied for the second Wild Card spot at the time, so the Reds’ equivalent in the 2019 AL, the A’s, actually had a 52.2% chance of making the postseason. There was another September 1 Wild Card tie in the NL in 2023, between the Diamondbacks and Giants. In 2021, the Blue Jays had 9.9% playoff odds on September 1, so they just missed the cutoff.

So the answer to the overarching question is no, there has not been a playoff race so settled this early in the season as this year’s National League. At least not in the past 12 seasons. There’s always been someone with some hope in each league, even in the two-Wild Card rounds, and especially in that hateful COVID-necessitated 16-team bracket from 2020.

Not this year in the NL. Barely, this year, in the AL.

This is the spot in the discussion that begs for action. There’s a problem — a lack of stretch run intrigue — so let’s solve it by futzing with the playoff format.

So far, if there’s any of this discourse beyond the usual crank objections to the current system, I’m not aware of it. But I want to get out in front of this discussion before we get to the third week of September, and the Royals have cooled off and the two remaining NL division races have been settled.

No, I say. No changes to the playoff format.

This happens every year when the March Madness and College Football Playoff brackets come out, or when some 85-win major league team ends up one series short of a Wild Card berth, and it’s only been enabled by the NBA’s ludicrous play-in ladder tournament.

There’s always at least one bright line that separates the contenders from the no-hopers, and trying to work backwards to fit the playoff format onto the quality of last year’s league is a losing proposition. Every year, some decent team will just miss the playoffs. It’s why we have the regular season. Deal with it.

Actually, apparently not literally every year. Because this year, there seem to be six fairly evenly matched teams at the top of the National League standings, and six playoff spots to accommodate them. So don’t get mad if there’s nothing to play for over the last two weeks of the season. That means the system worked perfectly.