The Los Angeles Dodgers didn’t make the regular season look easy — at least, not as easy as one might expect from a team with a $350 million payroll — but they’re just one game away from advancing to the Divisional Round after throttling the Cincinnati Reds, 10-5, in the first game of the Wild Card series last night.
They’ll have just the man on the mound to lead them to a series-clinching victory, staff ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, while the Reds will start trade deadline acquisition Zack Littell.
At DraftKings Sportsbook, the Dodgers are 1.5-run favorites (-298 on the Moneyline), with the run total set to eight. Meanwhile, Cincinnati is +235 on the Moneyline.
Betting Splits
No Game 1 winner has ever gone on to lose the series since the playoffs expanded to 12 teams in 2022, so it’s not a surprise that bettors are overwhelmingly backing Los Angeles, even at short odds. Though the Dodgers have been inconsistent this season, they’ve had the Reds’ number all season, winning six of the seven games and all four at Dodger Stadium, and Yamamoto picked up a win in his one start against Cincinnati, tossing seven innings of four-hit, one-run ball. However, the fact that the Reds have attracted 19% of the handle despite being responsible for just 11% of total bets indicates that some big-money bettors are banking on Los Angeles not to give Yamamoto run support, as it has been wont to do.
Bettors are even more all-in when it comes to the spread, with 92% of all bets and 94% of the handle coming in the Dodgers to handle business by multiple runs, which they have done in each of their four home games against Cincinnati and 13 of Yamamoto’s 17 starts. This season, Los Angeles has covered only 44.8% of the time, while the Reds have covered 49.7% of the time. The Dodgers ended the regular season hot, winning by multiple runs in three of their last four games and 12 of their last 19, while Cincinnati lost by multiple runs eight times in September, though Littell has only lost two games by multiple runs in 10 starts since joining the Reds.
The public is fairly evenly split on the run total; though a small majority (64%) of bettors are backing the teams’ offenses, big-money bettors trend more towards the under. Though three of each team’s last five games — both overall and against each other — went under, last night’s contest went over. Still, the Reds’ games tended to be quite low-scoring, as the over was just 53-93-10, and more of Los Angeles’ games went under than over as well. It all depends on how much the Dodgers’ offense comes out to support Yamamoto; this regular season, he received just 2.7 runs per 27 outs when he was in the game, the seventh-lowest figure among 117 players who made at least 20 starts.
Most Popular Player Props
Here are the top five most-bet player props for tonight’s game:
- Shohei Ohtani 1+ Home Runs (+152)
- Max Muncy (LAD) 1+ Home Runs (+298)
- Freddie Freeman 1+ Home Runs (+417)
- Yoshinobu Yamamoto 6+ Strikeouts Thrown (-370)
- Yoshinobu Yamamoto 8+ Strikeouts Thrown (+114)
Bettors are all in the Dodgers’ high-powered offense to show off their pop, just like they did last night against Hunter Greene. It makes sense: Dodger Stadium was the league’s most homer-friendly park this season, and Littell allowed the second-most homers in all of baseball. Weather conditions in Los Angeles when the game starts at 9:08 p.m. ET (6:08 p.m. local) will be perfect for bombs. In nine career appearances at Dodger Stadium, Littell has pitched to a 5.59 ERA and allowed two homers in 9.2 innings.
The only player from this prop list who went deep last night is Ohtani, who took Greene’s fourth offering 375 feet into the right-field bleachers and sent reliever Connor Phillips’ pitch more than halfway up the grandstand in the sixth inning. Of course, he’s always a threat to go deep, especially against Littell: he had a 1.076 OPS against righties, hit 31 of his 57 big flies at home, and has gone deep at least once in 52 separate games this season.
Muncy and Freeman should have a decent shot of going deep, too, given that they combined for 43 homers this season. Though Muncy has struggled through an injury-riddled season and only hit two homers in 11 games in September, he has 13 career playoff homers in 63 games. Freeman, too, has been a proven playoff performer, winning World Series MVP last season, and he has 14 career homers in the postseason. I back Freeman to go deep more than Muncy, not just because of the odds but because he has produced great numbers against both four-seamers and splitters, which Littell frequently throws to left-handed hitters.
For Yamamoto, the six-strikeout prop is basically free, given that he reached six or more in every start after the All-Star break and eight or more five separate times. His whiff and strikeout rates both rank in the league’s top quartile, and Cincinnati struck out the league’s 12th-most times in September. Blake Snell fanned nine batters in his seven innings of work last night, and with Yamamoto not scheduled to pitch again until next Wednesday, Dave Roberts should keep him in the game for at least 90 pitches.
And, since the 12 most-bet props are all on Los Angeles players, here’s two for Cincinnati as well:
- Zack Littell 6+ Strikeouts Thrown (+1120)
- Elly De La Cruz 1+ Home Runs (+700)
For Littell, it all depends on how long Terry Francona keeps him in the game with converted starters Nick Martinez and Nick Lodolo both waiting in the Reds’ bullpen. While Littell’s 12th-percentile strikeout rate is fairly low, he’s recorded six or more strikeouts in six of his 32 starts, which is frequent enough to make +1120 excellent value. For all of the Dodgers’ offensive strengths, they do strike out a decent amount, getting fanned the 16th-most times throughout the course of the season.
As for De La Cruz, he’s coming off of the second-best power season of his career, playing all 162 games and going deep 22 times. He has all the tools to be a great power hitter: at six-foot-five, he’s capable of producing an 83rd-percentile swing speed and a 72nd-percentile average exit velocity, and he’s posted a .569 slugging percentage against four-seam fastballs, which Yamamoto likes to throw against left-handed hitters. Although nominally a switch-hitter, De La Cruz has been much better as a southpaw, hitting 17 homers against righties. The problem for him is that Yamamoto conceded just 14 home runs all season, including only four after the All-Star break.
