Major League Baseball’s 2025 postseason will continue on Wednesday with the four Game 2s of the Wild Card Series. Tuesday’s action left four squads — the Cincinnati Reds, New York Yankees, San Diego Padres and Cleveland Guardians — in an 0-1 hole in the best-of-three series and on the wrong side of history. Indeed, teams that have won Game 1 of the wild card round — like the Los Angeles Dodgers, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs and Detroit Tigers did on Tuesday — have advanced on all 12 occasions since MLB implemented the new playoff format back in 2022.
It’s important to know the distinction between a descriptive and a predictive stat. The above? That’s descriptive. It’s true that none of the teams to lose Game 1 of a Wild Card Series have rallied to advance. What it’s not is predictive.
Anyone familiar with statistical modeling or baseball forecasting will know that the odds are much, much lower than 100%. Put another way, the favored team in most playoff games has around a 55% chance of winning that contest. Even if you grant a given team a 60% chance of winning each game, that leaves their opponent a 16% chance of winning two in a row. That’s no slam dunk, but the beauty and the agony of baseball is that lower-probability outcomes happen every single day. That’s part of what makes the sport so difficult to tame and so easy to love.
So, history may not be on the side of the four teams coming into play on Wednesday with an 0-1 deficit, but statistics and the general chaos of the sport suggest they do have a chance. Which of those teams has the best shot of pulling off a comeback, and which the worst? Let’s rank ’em.
1. New York Yankees
The argument for the Yankees is simple: they’re the best of the four remaining teams. Their plus-164 run differential was the best of all American League squads, and they led the majors in home runs and park-adjusted offense. There’s this perception that hitting home runs is a bad thing once October rolls around. That’s bunk. A 2012 study by Ben Lindbergh concluded: “Relying on the home run hasn’t made teams more vulnerable in October. If anything, it’s made them more October proof.”
The Yankees have several factors other than the longball working in their favor, too. To list a few: the Yankees possess home-field advantage, for whatever that’s worth this time of the year; they have two quality starting pitchers left to deploy (Carlos Rodón and Cam Schlittler); and they’re going up against a Red Sox squad that has been compromised by injury — there’s no Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Triston Casas, or Lucas Giolito walking through that clubhouse door, leaving Boston’s roster in a suboptimal state.
None of this guarantees the Yankees will win Game 2, let alone a potential Game 3. It does, in my estimation, make them the team that’s likeliest to defy history, however.
2. San Diego Padres
I picked the Padres to take their series against the Cubs, suggesting I may just have a blind spot for this club.
My rationale was that I really liked San Diego’s pitching staff, and I had some concerns that the full-season numbers overstated the current quality of this Cubs team — Kyle Tucker and Pete Crow-Armstrong, sure, but also Matthew Boyd and Shota Imanaga. I may get the series outcome wrong, but I think those points still have merit.
The Padres did get to Boyd, though they left a few opportunities on the table that could’ve swung Game 1. It didn’t help that San Diego’s top three batters — that is Fernando Tatis Jr., Luis Arraez, and Manny Machado — combined for zero hits and one walk, or that the rest of the Padres lineup was comparably quiet once the Cubs turned to their bullpen.
That’s just how it goes sometimes. We’ll see if the Padres can force a Game 3. At minimum, I have more faith in their ability to do so than the other teams ranked below.
3. Cleveland Guardians
You can make the argument that the Guardians should be No. 2 here, not No. 3. After all, the Guardians had the Tigers’ number during the regular season, with that dynamic culminating last week in Cleveland leapfrogging Detroit as part of their division title heist.
Even so, I’ve had trouble talking myself into the Guardians being a serious postseason threat. There’s top-heavy lineups and then there’s what Stephen Vogt is trotting out there, a starting nine that would be doing well to feature more than two or three league-average hitters on a given day.
The Guardians can really pitch, and they seem to have that certain je ne sais quoi that enables them to string together some wacky rallies. Maybe that’ll be enough on Wednesday. Heck, maybe it proves to be enough on Thursday, too. I just don’t feel confident enough to rank them higher.
4. Cincinnati Reds
Nothing against the Reds, but I think they’re the most cooked of these four teams.
The Reds have a bad offense and they’ve already used their best starting pitcher (Hunter Greene) against a Dodgers club that is healthier — and therefore more dangerous — than they were during the regular season, when they won 93 games and the NL West crown.
To make matters worse for the Reds, they’ll be tasked with scoring against right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Anything can happen in a single game, but Yamamoto during the regular season compiled a 2.49 ERA and a 3.41 strikeout-to-walk ratio across 30 starts. Good luck.
What do other CBS Sports experts think?
Here’s what the other CBS Sports MLB writers said when asked which team down 0-1 in the series was likeliest to rally and advance.
Dayn Perry: I have to go with the Yankees. They’re at home, and the current Red Sox rotation really drops off after Garrett Crochet, who of course pitched a gem in Game 1. As well, Boston closer Aroldis Chapman faced seven batters in Game 1. On an entirely other level, you can argue the Yankees are the American League’s best team this season, so why get cute with this one.
Matt Snyder: I certainly think the Padres and Guardians have a chance to come back and win their series. The Padres have such potentially excellent pitching with Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado anchoring a capable lineup, while the Guardians have gotten the Tarik Skubal game out of the way. But, yes, if tasked with picking the team with the best chance, it’s the Yankees. They got the Garrett Crochet start out of the way and have the much better offense overall. Brayan Bello has gotten knocked around lately and the Yankees can handle him in Game 2, then anything can happen in Game 3. And, to be clear: No, I didn’t forget about the Reds. I don’t think they have a chance.
Mike Axisa: Yeah, it’s the Yankees. They’re the best team among the four that lost Game 1, by a pretty good margin too, and the Red Sox won’t have Garrett Crochet the rest of the series. In terms of ability to come back and win the series, I would rank the four teams that lose Game 1 in the same order as R.J.:
1. Yankees
(gap)
2. Padres
(gap)
3. Guardians
4. Reds
The Yankees tied for the AL’s best record and had the league’s best run differential by 54 runs. They have the best offense among those four teams by a mile (by 10 miles, really) and have two really good pitchers lined up for Games 2 and 3 (Carlos Rodón and Cam Schlittler). No need to overthink this one. It’s the Yankees, clearly.