The Reds are living out the Royals’ 2025 MLB playoff dreams

As the 2025 MLB Playoffs are underway, Kansas City Royals fans might be looking for teams or players to root for or storylines to watch, with their tea forced to watch October unfold from the sidelines.

There’s one storyline in particular that Royals fans ought to pay attention to that could be either endearing or painful.

The final game of the opening day of the postseason will take place on the West Coast when the Cincinnati Reds travel to Los Angeles to take on the Dodgers.

The Reds not only enter this series against the defending World Series champs as the underdog, but they enter the postseason with a pretty ordinary looking record in general at 83-79 – just one game higher than the Kansas City Royals’ 82-80 record.

While some may wonder how a team so close to .500 can be playing October baseball, the bottom line is they are – whether that be because of performance or taking advantage of the circumstances given to them.

But considering how close they were to the Royals’ record this season, it’s hard not to think that Reds are in the midst of what Kansas City hoped for this season.

The Reds are living out the Royals’ 2025 MLB playoff dreams

While the Royals weren’t privy in the American League to the weaker level of competition for the final Wild Card spot that the Reds had in the National League, you can’t knock Cincinnati for playing the cards that were dealt to them.

That doesn’t make it any less frustrating for the Royals faithful though, because the Reds and the Royals are very similar in many ways.

Both held rotations that sat in the Top 10 in baseball in ERA, both possessed top half sub-4.00 ERA bullpens and both saw their biggest weakness be their offense.

Highlighting their offense in particular, it’s pretty spectacular to see just how similalr these two were to each other.

The key difference here is runs scored, as the Cincinnati Reds executed the the type of small ball baseball that Royals have seemingly made their identity for over decade, dating back to their 2014 “keep the line moving” AL Pennant team.

It’s no secret that this was the mentality this group adopted yet again this season. At the start of their late-April/early-May hot stretch – where they won 16 of 18 games after a brutal six-game losing streak – captain Salvador Perez revealed the age old mentality was alive and well in the Royals clubhouse.

“You need to keep the line moving,” Perez told MLB.com’s Anne Rogers on April 24. “Give what they give to me…if it’s a walk, take the base and let the guy behind me do his job.”

Looking at the Reds’ offense, again it bears a lot of similarities to the Royals – a below average unit that strives to find ways scratch just enough runs across the board as team to win ball games.

However, there’s one glaring difference between the two when stacked side-by-side though. That of course is runs scored. The Reds’ 716 runs scored placed them 14th, while the Royals’ 651 placed them in the MLB’s bottom five at 26th. We’re talking about a top half run scoring offense as opposed to a bottom-tier run scoring offense.

And as OptaSTATS pointed out this week, Cincinnati is the first team in a non-shortened season to make the postseason without a qualified hitter above .270 or a batter with 25+ homers. If that doesn’t scream “keep the line moving”, I don’t know what does.

Simply put, the Reds found a way to take advantage of the situations they were placed in and use their entire team to capitalize, something the Royals fell short of doing.

And now, the Reds’ similar team to the Royals’ finds themselves competing on the league’s biggest stage, while the Kansas City watches from home.