September 14, 2026
September 14, 2026
Cincinnati Reds’ 2025 Season: An Improbable Run to October
The Cincinnati Reds’ 2025 season will not be remembered for a division title. It will be remembered for refusing to fold when the calendar said it was over. Terry Francona took over a club that had missed the postseason in four of five years. By late September, his team had clawed into a wild card spot that looked impossible two weeks earlier. Cincinnati finished 83-79, third in the National League Central and 14 games behind Milwaukee. The record tells only part of the story. Pitching punched above its weight all year. The offense never found its rhythm. Then a final month turned a forgettable summer into a story worth retelling.
Terry Francona did not take the Cincinnati job to manage a rebuild in slow motion. He was hired in October 2024 after David Bell’s dismissal, bringing two World Series rings from Boston and nearly a decade of stability in Cleveland. He promised a looser clubhouse and sharper in-game decisions. Reds ownership wanted a proven voice who could squeeze more out of a young, talented roster, and Francona’s reputation for connecting with players made him an easy sell to a fan base starved for relevance. He inherited Elly De La Cruz, a burgeoning rotation, and a front office unwilling to spend big, so his fingerprints would need to show up in the standings, not the payroll. The early results were uneven, and by mid-September the honeymoon had worn thin.
Cincinnati’s lineup searched all year for an identity it never fully found. The Reds play half their games in a hitter-friendly ballpark, yet finished 21st in the majors in home runs. Their 92 wRC+ reflected a roster full of solid contributors, with almost no one who took the leap into stardom. Spencer Steer provided pop with 21 home runs and 75 RBIs, TJ Friedl set the table at the top of the order, and Gavin Lux brought a professional at-bat to a lineup that needed one badly. The thump a team needs in October simply never arrived. Hitting coach Chris Valaika pushed a line-drive approach that kept Cincinnati competitive without making it fearsome. The Reds’ 2025 season still ended in the playoffs. Given those offensive limitations, that says everything about what carried the club instead.
Pitching saved this season, full stop. The lineup labored, but Cincinnati’s rotation quietly assembled one of the better bodies of work in the National League. The staff ranked second in the majors in wins above replacement. That gave Francona a foundation he could trust every fifth day.
Andrew Abbott seized the role of staff anchor and never let go. He finished 10-7 with a sparkling 2.87 ERA across more than 166 innings. He became the pitcher Cincinnati leaned on in the biggest moments. Nick Lodolo matched him blow for blow, delivering the best season of his career at 9-8 with a 3.33 ERA. Brady Singer led the staff with 14 wins and 163 strikeouts, despite a bumpier 4.03 ERA. Closer Emilio Pagán locked down 32 saves with a 2.88 ERA. He turned a potential bullpen headache into one of the roster’s genuine strengths.
Every rotation this good survives a scare, and Cincinnati’s came in waves. Hunter Greene, the staff’s hardest thrower, spent long stretches sidelined before finally working his way back late in the year. Rookie Chase Burns had opened eyes with his stuff after his call-up. Then he landed on the injured list in mid-August, just as he was proving he belonged. The Reds absorbed both losses without their season collapsing, a credit to the pitching depth Francona and his staff had quietly built.
Nick Krall’s front office chose to reinforce rather than retreat in late July. Cincinnati sat only a handful of games out of a wild card spot. The Reds sent prospect Sammy Stafura and reliever Taylor Rogers to Pittsburgh for third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes. His glove steadied an infield leaning heavily on De La Cruz’s range. Cincinnati also landed right-hander Zack Littell from Tampa Bay and utility man Miguel Andujar from Oakland. None of the additions were headline-grabbing. Each addressed a specific need. Krall’s balance of protecting prospects while improving the roster proved right for a team that needed every edge in September.
Elly De La Cruz gave Cincinnati its signature player. The Reds’ 2025 season simply does not happen without him. He hit .264 with 22 home runs, 86 RBIs and 37 stolen bases across a full 162 games. That earned him his second straight All-Star selection. He played the kind of highlight-reel shortstop that made Great American Ball Park feel electric on a nightly basis. De La Cruz turned down an invitation to the Home Run Derby, choosing instead to protect his swing for the stretch drive ahead, a decision that looked prescient once October arrived. He was not the only story in the lineup, but he was the player Cincinnati built its ceiling around.
Nothing about how this season ended looked possible from inside a September collapse. That is exactly what makes the final three weeks worth telling in full.
The floor nearly gave out from under Cincinnati’s season on September 16, when a loss to St. Louis dropped the Reds to 75-76. Analytics models gave them barely a puncher’s chance, projecting roughly a three percent probability of reaching October. The fan base had every reason to write the year off. Injuries had piled up, the offense had gone cold at the worst possible time, and the wild card race appeared headed toward teams with sturdier rosters.
Cincinnati refused to read the numbers. The Reds ripped off an 8-3 finish over their final eleven games. Their rotation carried them, and clutch situational hitting did the rest. On September 28, the Mets lost to Miami, and Cincinnati clinched its first postseason berth since the shortened 2020 season. It was the club’s first berth in a full 162-game slate since 2013. Reliever Brent Suter captured the moment in the clubhouse, shouting that nobody could kill this team. For three unforgettable weeks, nobody could argue with him. Only two other clubs since 2000 had reached the playoffs with as few as 83 wins.
The stretch run bought Cincinnati a ticket to October, but it could not buy a favorable matchup. The Reds drew the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the best-of-three NL Wild Card Series, with every game scheduled at Dodger Stadium. Hunter Greene took the ball for Game 1 and pitched Cincinnati into contention, but the Dodgers pulled away late for a 10-5 win. Game 2 followed the same script, Los Angeles finding the extra gear Cincinnati’s bullpen and lineup could not match in an 8-4 win that closed out the sweep. It was a deflating finish for a club that had just spent three weeks proving doubters wrong.
This was never going to be remembered as a vintage Cincinnati team, and it did not need to be. The Reds wore a patch honoring Pete Rose all season, a tribute to the Cincinnati icon who died the previous September. There was something fitting about a scrappy, undersized roster playing meaningful October baseball under that emblem. Francona’s first year delivered exactly what his hiring promised, even if the path there was jagged. The Reds’ 2025 season leaves the organization with real momentum. Andrew Abbott is a burgeoning ace, and Elly De La Cruz is a superstar locked in for years. The fan base watched its team get left for dead in mid-September, then climb all the way back anyway. That kind of finish does not fade quickly in a city that had waited a long time for October nights to matter again.
For full statistical context on the 2025 campaign, Baseball-Reference maintains the complete team ledger. MLB.com tracked the Reds’ standings throughout the year. The Cincinnati Reds’ official site covers the current roster and organizational news. Coverage of the Wild Card Series loss to the Dodgers detailed how Los Angeles closed out the sweep. Background on Terry Francona’s managerial career shows why his hiring carried such weight in Cincinnati.
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