World Series Final Report — December 1, 2025

 

Masterful! 

Giants complete all-time great season, defeating Reds 4 games to 1 in World Series

The Giants’ ninth Redwood SOM League title arrived with the force and inescapability of Loma Prieta. By the time Jake McCarthy grounded into the double play that ended Game 5 with a 13–5 Giants victory, the result disappointed many but surprised none. 

With their four-games-to-one gentleman’s sweep, the Giants capped off one of the great seasons in Redwood SOM history: color-to-color, with 52 regular-season wins that preceded a postseason rampage, disposing of the Athletics and then the Reds while winning eight of ten games in the process. 

The World Series effectively ended in the top of Game Five’s fourth inning, when the Giants reached Ronel Blanco for eight runs. The inning’s offensive avalanche was such that it seems pointless to note individual plays, as if any particular drop makes or breaks a rainstorm. But some nonetheless stand out: Mike Trout’s two-run shot before an out was recorded, followed, seemingly twenty batters later, by Kerry Carpenter’s two-out grand slam. In the at-bat just before Carpenter’s blast, Blanco committed a critical error on Kyle Tucker’s comeback grounder, not only allowing a run on its own but squelching any chance of a third out. There aren’t a lot of five-run errors in this game, but Blanco found a way. 

In all the Giants hit seven (!) home runs during Game 5, with Trout hitting another in addition to his fourth-inning shot, while Tucker added two of his own, and Francisco Lindor and Rafael Devers added one each. Meanwhile Chris Sale stymied the Reds’ hitters, finishing yet another post-season complete game while striking out 11 and scattering nine hits. 

The task of selecting a series MVP was complicated by the Giants’ usual surplus of worthy candidates: Lindor batted .316 for the series while scoring six runs in five games; Sal Perez batted .294 with an OPS of .899; and Trout’s heroics weren’t limited to Game Five, as he added an additional dinger and drove in six runs and scored another four himself. 

But Sale stood out again, and commanded MVP honors: he was the winning pitcher in two of the Giants’ four wins, posting a 3.12 ERA and striking out 19 in all. He was aided throughout by the Giants’ sterling defense, especially their infield that seemed to turn double plays whenever Sale needed one, snuffing out a number of Reds’ would-be rallies aborning. 

Game 1 recap

Game 2 recap

Game 3 recap

Game 4 recap

The 2025 Giants are not only your Redwood SOM world champions, but one of the great teams in league history. The rest of the league hopes that we shall not see their like again!

2025 World Series

Giants (Number 1 seed) versus Reds (Number 2 seed)

Giants win series 4 games to 1

MVP: Chris Sale

Divisional Playoffs

Giants (Number 1 seed) versus Oakland (Number 4 seed)

Giants win series 4 games to 1

MVP: Francisco Lindor

Reds (Number 2 seed) versus Yankees (Number 3 seed)

Reds win series 4 games to 3

MVP: Bobby Witt Jr.

Final Regular Season Standings

Larry Division

1. x-Giants  (52-28), .650, 0.0 GB
2. y-Yankees (43-37), .538, 9.0 GB
3. Cardinals (41-39), .513, 11.0 GB

Moe Division

1. x-Oakland (43-37), .538, 0.0  GB
2. Mets (40-40), .500, 3.0 GB
3. Rockies (33-47), .413 10.0 GB

Curly Division

1. x-Reds (43-37), .538, 0.0 GB
2. Pirates (34-46), .425, 9.0 GB
3. Red Sox (31-49), .388, 12.0 GB

x - Clinched division

y - Clinched wild card

2026 Draft Order

1. Red Sox

2. Rockies

3. Pirates

4. Mets

5. Cardinals

6. Oakland

7. Yankees

8. Reds

9. Giants

Next action: Hot stove starts now! See you next season!

2025 World Series Report — Game 4

 Shane Baz dazzles the Reds in Game 4; Giants one win away from the promised land

Video Recap

The offenses returned to their normal quiet selves after Game 3’s tsunami of runs, as the Giants rode another dominant night from their pitching staff and just enough timely hitting to edge the Reds, 2–1, in Game 4 of the 2025 World Series. With this win the Giants tightened their grip on the series, extending their lead to 3 games to 1. What started as a taut duel between power arms turned into a late–inning exercise in survival, with Cincinnati stranding the tying run in scoring position in the ninth as the sellout crowd fell abruptly silent. 

From the first pitch, Giants starter Sean Baz looked like a man intent on shortening Cincinnati’s season, attacking the zone with a heavy fastball and just enough offspeed to keep the Reds guessing. He faced only 28 batters over seven innings, allowing a lone run on four hits while striking out six and walking two, chewing through the Reds’ order with the poise of a veteran far older than his years. 

On the other side, Reds right–hander Osvaldo Bido did all a home pitcher can reasonably do in October – keep the ball in the yard, keep his club in the game, and pray for a big swing that never quite came. Bido matched zeroes with Baz into the middle innings, scattering four hits and three walks while punching out seven in seven grinding frames, his 51 pitches in the zone a testament to his refusal to nibble with the season hanging over the rail. 

For awhile it looked like a reprise of Game 3’s insanity, as Jake McCarthy led off the Reds’ half of the first inning with a deep blast for a solo shot. But that was to be the Reds’ only run, and in the top of the second the Giants matched the Reds when Sal Perez drew a walk and later scored on Bryson Stott’s single. Nolan Arenado tried to score from second on the same hit, but was gunned down at the plate on a laser beam from Reds outfielder Max Kepler. 

It was the top of the eighth inning before the Giants cracked the stalemate with the kind of inning that never looks like much on the scorecard but looms large in a short series. A leadoff double by the red-hot Francisco Lindor, followed immediately by Kyle Tucker’s RBI single, pushed across the tie-breaking run as orange–clad fans behind the visitors’ dugout erupted into a small but noisy island in a sea of red. 

From there, Giants manager Brian Libby turned the ball over to his late–inning weapon, Mason Miller, and told him to make the one–run margin stand up against the heart of Cincinnati’s order. Miller recorded the final six outs, yielding just two hits with no walks and two strikeouts, his velocity and tempo giving the Reds no time to breathe, let alone mount a sustained rally. 

 For the Reds, the loss will linger not because they were outclassed, but because they were out–executed in the handful of moments that separate a World Series classic from winter. Six hits and three walks yielded only a single run, and a night spent hitting into routine grounders and fly balls felt like a betrayal of an offense that had, just one game previously, so often thrived on chaos and crooked numbers. 

The Giants, meanwhile, achieved a 3–1 series lead and the knowledge that they now have three cracks at finishing the job, two of them (if necessary) in front of their own crowd. If Game 4 is remembered as the night the 2025 World Series tilted decisively west, it will be because a young right–hander named Baz and a bullpen spearheaded by Miller made a one–run edge look as safe as a blowout, leaving the Reds with one last chance to postpone the inevitable.

2025 World Series report — Game 3

Reds explode in the first, lose their lead in the third, and eventually prevail in an all-time insane game 3 to close the gap to 2-1 

Video Recap

The World Series finally broke into a full sprint in Game 3, and the Reds turned their home park into a madhouse, outlasting the Giants 14–10 in a delirious, hit-soaked slugfest by the river. After two taut games by the Bay, this one was all color and chaos—24 combined runs, 27 hits, and a scoreboard that never seemed to catch its breath. 

The Reds didn’t just open Game 3; they tore the lid off it in the bottom of the first, turning Bryce Miller’s night into a survival drill before some fans had even found their seats. Jake McCarthy set the tone immediately, reaching base and forcing the Giants’ outfield into motion, and when Juan Soto followed by getting on as well, the ballpark took on that charged, low hum that says something big is coming. Shohei Ohtani ground Miller through a long at-bat, and even when he made an out it felt like a win for the dugout, because hit after hit after hit followed: Bobby Witt Jr.; Luis Rengifo; Josh Naylor; Max Kepler; Tyler Stephenson; Nico Hoerner: consecutive singles all. Then after McCarthy whiffed for out number two, Soto delivered his second hit of the inning, a double plating two more. 

The Reds’ first inning was a full-blown onslaught—walks mixed with line drives, the Giants infield playing uphill, the crowd roaring at every crack of the bat. It finally ended with eight Reds crossing the plate on eight hits, a first-inning avalanche that seemed to rattle the very lights above the river. When Miller finally escaped, it felt less like recording three outs than staggering out of a storm, with Cincinnati’s dugout howling and the Giants suddenly playing from miles behind. 

But the Giants didn’t fold. Francisco Lindor answered early with a solo shot, and San Francisco's batsmen—Lindor, Kyle Tucker, Kerry Carpenter, Daulton Varsho—kept prying at Ronel Blanco, drawing walks and lining balls to the outfield as if determined to drag the game back to respectability by force. Mike Trout and Julio Rodríguez joined the party, Rodríguez reaching repeatedly as Devers and Sal Pérez chipped in with singles and productive outs, carving into the lead one grinding at-bat at a time. By the time they were done batting in the second, the Giants had closed the gap to a manageable 8-6 deficit. Then, in the top of the third, Kyle Tucker went deep, his three-run shot giving the Giants an improbable 9-8 lead. 

The Giants’ surge, however, provoked a fresh Reds rebuttal. Soto reached base like a metronome, Ohtani and Witt drove balls to the alleys, and Henderson, Rengifo, and Luis Guillorme turned the middle of the order into a conveyor belt. By the time Miller’s night ended, the Giants right-hander had a brutal line: 13 runs on 14 hits over 6⅓ innings, punished for every missed spot, and the Reds had recaptured the lead 13-10. On the other side, Blanco’s 6⅓ innings told the tale of a pitcher simultaneously overwhelmed and stubborn—10 runs allowed, but only five earned, as seven walks and defensive miscues forced him to hard labor. 

The bullpens changed the game’s texture: Griffin Jax came on for the Giants and the Reds turned to Jeremiah Estrada. Jax stabilized things for San Francisco, allowing only a run (a Pete Alonso big fly) on two hits in 1⅔ innings and giving his lineup room to keep swinging.  

Estrada took the chaos personally. Asked to protect a game that felt like it might never end, he fired 2⅔ scoreless innings with three strikeouts and just two hits allowed, attacking the zone and daring the Giants to beat him with swings instead of free bases. San Francisco still found ways to make it interesting—Lindor on base again, Trout and Rodríguez pushing deep counts, Arenado and Adley Rutschman extending innings with late knocks—but each potential game-tilter was met with a firm Estrada fast ball, a play behind him, or a harmless fly ball to the big outfield. 

By the late innings, every out felt like a plot twist. The Giants pushed their total to 10 runs on 11 hits, drawing walk after walk, benefitting from an error at first, and twice bringing the tying run within a couple of batters. But Cincinnati’s 14 runs on 16 hits and seven walks were too much weight for even this resilient Giants lineup to lift, and when Estrada finally coaxed the last fly ball into an outfielder’s glove, the riverfront erupted in the roar of a series reborn.

2025 World Series Report — Game 2

Giants survive ninth-inning scare and power their way to two-game advantage in Fall Classic

Video Recap

The World Series tilted and whirled under a hard autumn sky, and this time the bats woke up on both sides of the bay breeze—until the Giants seized the final word, 5–4, to hold serve at home and take a two-games-to-none lead in a series that already feels carved from bedrock. Game 2 was baseball’s pendulum: towering swings, tight corners, and a late chill that made every hop look tricky and every mistake loom large. 

The Giants didn’t wait for the drama to find them, stamping the night with a multi-homer salvo that set Candlestick into a rumble; Kerry Carpenter and Mike Trout each left their signatures on the evening with no-doubt shots that turned careful at-bats into instant electricity. Francisco Lindor’s table-setting and Kyle Tucker’s lift through the gaps gave those swings a spine, while Daulton Varsho’s extra-base thump kept the Reds stretched thin from alley to alley. By the middle frames, San Francisco had stacked five runs on five hits—lean production, every one of them barbed. 

Dylan Cease pitched with purpose and edge, striking out a dozen in eight innings, punctuating rallies with high-wire fastballs and a breaking ball that fell off a ledge. He scattered six hits and two walks, and though the Reds nicked him with long balls, Cease’s poise after contact kept the Giants perpetually a step ahead when the traffic got loud. Tyler Holton absorbed the ninth’s noise for the save, allowing two runs but slamming the door before the tying knock could clear the infield dust. 

Cincinnati answered with their own thunderclaps—Pete Alonso opened the ledger with a first-inning home run, and Gunnar Henderson belted another in the ninth to inflict anxiety on the hime dugout. Juan Soto reached and stirred, Shohei Ohtani and Bobby Witt put the ball in play with hostile intent, and Henderson also roped a double that split the outfield like a seam in canvas. The Reds piled eight hits and pushed four across, a stubborn effort that kept the Giants’ crowd shifting in their seats to the final out. 

Trevor Williams gave Cincinnati seven sturdy innings, surrendering five earned on eight hits but denying the avalanche when the game threatened to spill over. He struck out six against two walks and held the middle third together long enough for the Reds to climb back within a swing, a small victory on a night when San Francisco’s barrels found their marks. Hunter Gaddis shouldered a clean eighth to preserve the last chance, the kind of quiet frame that often becomes a footnote if the final rally lands. 

San Francisco’s pair of sacrifice flies from the middle of the order—Trout and Julio Rodríguez bending at-bats toward run creation—proved just as vital as the early light-tower work, the classic October exchange of power for placement when the count demanded humility. A double-play ball snuffed one Reds spark and a deep out with runners moving became Cease’s best friend, those small choices in pitch and approach making the difference between chaos and control. 

The ninth unraveled like a courtroom verdict read too slowly—Alonso’s second blast cut the edge to one and turned every seatback into a grip handle. Holton, unblinking, took the ball, took a breath, and took the game, and when the last grounder found leather, the Giants had what they came for: a 5–4 win, and a 2–0 series cushion.

2025 World Series Report — Game 1

Sale, Devers combine to win Game 1 for the Giants

Video Recap

On a cool November night by the Bay, the 2025 World Series opened not with a slugfest, but with a knife fight—nine innings of tightrope pitching and squandered chances that ended with the home Giants slipping past the Cincinnati Reds, 2–1, to take Game 1. 

The Giants’ offense never truly erupted, but it struck with the precision of a scalpel, doing just enough against Reds starter Joe Ryan, who pitched with the poise of a seasoned October hand. Finally, in the seventh inning, Rafael Devers secured for the Giants something other than a zero on the scoreboard with a two-run dinger. In all San Francisco scratched out just six hits, and Cincinnati matched that hit total but without Devers’ power, with their own six knocks scattered like fireflies that never quite formed a constellation. 

Chris Sale was the looming figure of the night, a left-handed specter who bent the game to his will for 8⅓ innings and holding the Reds to a single run. He walked only three, struck out eight, and ceded just six hits, carving through a lineup that featured the firepower of Juan Soto, Shohei Ohtani, Bobby Witt Jr. and Pete Alonso as if he had seen them all in some earlier dream. When he finally handed the ball to Mason Miller for the last two outs, it felt less like a change in pitchers than the next verse in the same grim song. 

The Reds did have their chances, and the names in their order read like a slugger’s convention—Soto, Ohtani, Witt, Pete Alonso, Christian Yelich. Meanwhile Ryan spun together 6⅔ innings, and while he yielded six hits and nine strikeouts with just a single walk, the Giants won the battle with one swing of Devers’ bat. Josh Hader followed with 1⅓ spotless innings, four batters up and down, a clean, late sheen that kept the deficit from growing but came a few beats too late for the visiting offense. 

At the top of the Giants order, Francisco Lindor and Kyle Tucker set the tone with disciplined at-bats, combining patience with line-drive authority that forced Ryan into the stretch early and often. Kerry Carpenter and Daulton Varsho added the kind of extra-base thump October demands, each notching doubles that shifted the geometry of the game and set the table for the heart of the lineup. Every gapper seemed to echo off the park’s broad alleys, a reminder that in this ballpark, speed and angles can be as deadly as brute strength. 

The game’s fulcrum came in the seventh, when suddenly the Devers home run turned a one-run deficit into a 2–1 advantage that felt much larger against Sale’s command. Cincinnati’s bats answered with hard outs rather than rallies, their loudest swings dying on warning tracks and in the gloves of outfielders shading deep. 

By the late innings, the night had settled into the quiet tension that only October can muster, with every pitch an argument and every foul ball a stay of execution. Sale’s exit in the ninth to a roar from the San Francisco crowd gave way to Miller’s brief, ruthless cameo, and the Reds’ final hopes flickered and vanished on routine plays that looked anything but routine in the scorebook’s stark light. 

When the last out thudded into a Giants glove, Game 1 belonged to the home team, a taut, old-fashioned opener that left both sides knowing this series would be won not just by stars, but by the thin margins where pitching, patience, and timing meet.

World Series Final Report — December 1, 2025

Masterful! 

Giants complete all-time great season, defeating Reds 4 games to 1 in World Series

SF Giants: 2025 World Champions!
Click to launch fireworks over the Bay Area.

The Giants’ ninth Redwood SOM League title arrived with the force and inescapability of Loma Prieta. By the time Jake McCarthy grounded into the double play that ended Game 5 with a 13–5 Giants victory, the outcome disappointed many but surprised none. 

With their four-games-to-one gentleman’s sweep, the Giants capped off one of the great seasons in Redwood SOM history: color-to-color, with 52 regular-season wins that preceded a postseason rampage, disposing of the Athletics and then the Reds while winning eight of ten games in the process. 

The World Series effectively ended in the top of Game Five’s fourth inning, when the Giants reached Ronel Blanco for eight runs. The inning’s offensive avalanche was such that it seems pointless to note individual plays, as if any particular drop makes or breaks a rainstorm. But some nonetheless stand out: Mike Trout’s two-run shot before an out was recorded, followed, seemingly twenty batters later, by Kerry Carpenter’s two-out grand slam. In the at-bat just before Carpenter’s blast, Blanco committed a critical error on Kyle Tucker’s comeback grounder, not only allowing a run on its own but squelching any chance of a third out. There aren’t a lot of five-run errors in this game, but Blanco found a way. 

In all the Giants hit seven (!) home runs during Game 5, with Trout hitting another in addition to his fourth-inning shot, while Tucker added two of his own, and Francisco Lindor and Rafael Devers added one each. Meanwhile Chris Sale stymied the Reds’ hitters, finishing yet another post-season complete game while striking out 11 and scattering nine hits. 

The task of selecting a series MVP was complicated by the Giants’ usual surplus of worthy candidates: Lindor batted .316 for the series while scoring six runs in five games; Sal Perez batted .294 with an OPS of .899; and Trout’s heroics weren’t limited to Game Five, as he added an additional dinger and drove in six runs and scored another four himself. 

But Sale stood out again, and commanded MVP honors: he was the winning pitcher in two of the Giants’ four wins, posting a 3.12 ERA and striking out 19 in all. He was aided in throughout by the Giants’ sterling defense, especially their infield that seemed to turn double plays whenever Sale needed one, snuffing out a number of Reds’ would-be rallies aborning. 

The 2025 Giants are not only your Redwood SOM world champions, but one of the great teams in league history. The rest of the league hopes that we shall not see their like again!

2025 World Series

Giants (Number 1 seed) versus Reds (Number 2 seed)

Giants win series r games to 1

MVP: Chris Sale

Divisional Playoffs

Giants (Number 1 seed) versus Oakland (Number 4 seed)

Giants win series 4 games to 1

MVP: Francisco Lindor

Reds (Number 2 seed) versus Yankees (Number 3 seed)

Reds win series 4 games to 3

MVP: Bobby Witt Jr.

Final Regular Season Standings

Larry Division

1. x-Giants  (52-28), .650, 0.0 GB
2. y-Yankees (43-37), .538, 9.0 GB
3. Cardinals (41-39), .513, 11.0 GB

Moe Division

1. x-Oakland (43-37), .538, 0.0  GB
2. Mets (40-40), .500, 3.0 GB
3. Rockies (33-47), .413 10.0 GB

Curly Division

1. x-Reds (43-37), .538, 0.0 GB
2. Pirates (34-46), .425, 9.0 GB
3. Red Sox (31-49), .388, 12.0 GB

x - Clinched division

y - Clinched wild card

2026 Draft Order

1. Red Sox

2. Rockies

3. Pirates

4. Mets

5. Cardinals

6. Oakland

7. Yankees

8. Reds

9. Giants

Next action: Hot stove starts now! See you next season!

Final standings and post-season madness — November 18, 2025

(Updated November 20, 2025)

Divisional Playoffs

Giants (Number 1 seed) versus Oakland (Number 4 seed)

Giants lead series 3 games to 1

Reds (Number 2 seed) versus Yankees (Number 3 seed)

Reds win series 4 games to 3

Final Regular Season Standings

Larry Division

1. x-Giants  (52-28), .650, 0.0 GB
2. y-Yankees (43-37), .538, 9.0 GB
3. Cardinals (41-39), .513, 11.0 GB

Moe Division

1. x-Oakland (43-37), .538, 0.0  GB
2. Mets (40-40), .500, 3.0 GB
3. Rockies (33-47), .413 10.0 GB

Curly Division

1. x-Reds (43-37), .538, 0.0 GB
2. Pirates (34-46), .425, 9.0 GB
3. Red Sox (31-49), .388, 12.0 GB

x - Clinched division

y - Clinched wild card

2026 Draft Order

1. Red Sox

2. Rockies

3. Pirates

4. Mets

5. Cardinals

6-9. TBD

Next action: Divisional Playoffs: Giants and Oakland resume on Friday, November 21, 11:00 a.m., at the Commissioner's. The booth is open; let's roll!