Two low-budget Major League Baseball teams from Ohio are trying to crash the sport’s postseason party and complete historic collapses by larger-spending opponents. 

Entering the final week of the 2025 regular season, the Reds and Guardians are both looking to complete unexpected ascents to the playoffs—despite Cincinnati’s luxury-tax payroll standing at No. 22 in MLB at $140.9 million and Cleveland’s ranking No. 25 at $121.4 million. 

As of Monday, the Reds have risen into the final National League’s final wild-card slot, overtaking the Mets and their No. 2 payroll of $340.6 million over the weekend, by virtue of a tiebreaker they hold over New York. The Guardians, meanwhile, have two separate potential paths to the postseason. They are just one game behind the Tigers, holding the No. 18 payroll at $170.3 million, for the American League Central division lead, and they are also tied for the final AL wild-card position with the Astros, the league’s No. 7 spender at $247.4 million. 

Critically for the Guardians, they hold tiebreakers over both the Tigers and Astros as a massive three-game series begins Tuesday at Progressive Field between Detroit and Cleveland. 

“This last month, a lot of people could say we were out of it. I think [players] could have started to look at their numbers and just tried to look to the offseason,” Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan said. “But we’ve been playing some really unselfish baseball, grinding together, sticking together. It’s been really fun, and we’ve got a really exciting week coming up.”

Epic Rises and Falls

No team in the 57-season history of MLB divisional play has risen from a deficit of more than 14 games to win a division, with the 1978 Yankees holding the mark for the largest comeback. The Guardians were 15 and a half games behind Detroit in early July, and as recently as Sept. 11, were still nine and a half games back. Cleveland has won 15 of its past 17 games to surge back into contention, but it has had help, too. 

Detroit has dropped 9 of its last 10 games to see its once-commanding division lead all but evaporate. That mirrors the ongoing freefall in Queens, where the Mets, a team with MLB’s best record in June, have also lost 11 of the last 15 games and no longer control their own playoff destiny. 

The Reds took advantage of that by winning 10 of 15, including a four-game weekend sweep of the playoff-bound Cubs. Cincinnati is now eyeing its first postseason berth—excluding the pandemic-affected 2020 campaign—since 2013. The Diamondbacks, winners of seven of their last 10, are also still lurking, standing just a game behind the Reds and Mets in the wild-card standings.

“We’ve had some highs, a lot of lows, but I think to get hot right now is great,” said Reds outfielder/infielder Gavin Lux. “We deserve it, we’ve grinded it out, and we’re seeing the rewards at the end, but we’ve got to finish it.”

The Astros, meanwhile, have not missed the playoffs since 2016, but they are currently on the outside looking in after getting swept this past weekend at home by the Mariners.

Former Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner is getting paid roughly $100 million to finalize his exit from the storied Formula One outfit, and he will be allowed to sign with another team as soon as next year, according to multiple reports.

On Monday, Red Bull officially announced Horner’s exit, more than two months after firing him from the team principal position he had held since 2005. His contract was set to run until 2030, so the two sides had been negotiating a buyout.

Red Bull did not release specific terms, but Horner is reportedly taking a reduced payout—albeit still a lucrative one—in the range of $100 million, according to multiple outlets, including ESPN and Sky Sports. And perhaps more importantly, the 51-year-old will be allowed to sign a new F1 contract, if another F1 team wants to hire him, in 2026.

What’s Next?

Shortly after Red Bull fired Horner in July, Ferrari signed team principal Fred Vasseur to a multiyear extension. 

In August, Cadillac F1 team CEO Dan Towriss pushed back on rumors that the incoming expansion team would pursue Horner. “There have been no talks with Christian Horner,” Towriss said. “No plans to do that. I’d like to officially shut down that rumor.” Cadillac hired Graeme Lowdon as its team principal in December.

Alpine, which sits last place on the grid this season and saw its former team principal, Graeme Lowdon, resign in May, has also been rumored as a landing spot for Horner.

This season, former Red Bull CTO Adrian Newey joined Aston Martin. Newey and Horner worked together at Red Bull from 2006 to 2024. Aston Martin is seventh in the F1 constructors’ standings under first-year team principal Andy Cowell.

The Dodgers have hit an attendance milestone that no Major League Baseball team has achieved in 17 years, and it might be that long before it happens again. 

Los Angeles finished its 2025 home schedule with a total attendance of 4.01 million, a franchise record, representing the first time any MLB club has surpassed 4 million since both the Mets and Yankees did so in 2008—the final year of their former stadiums. 

With an average per-game attendance of 49,537 this season, the Dodgers’ typical draw was larger than the individual capacities of every other MLB ballpark, as ongoing design and development trends across baseball have increasingly favored smaller venues. The team’s 2025 attendance, meanwhile, happened as it defends its World Series title from last year—its first full-season championship since 1988—and it had another peak-level season from superstar Shohei Ohtani. 

The Japanese two-way phenom is firmly in line to win a second straight National League MVP award, and his massive global popularity has helped further boost the Dodgers’ attendance beyond their already-perennial status as MLB’s best. Forty-six of the Dodgers’ 81 home games exceeded 50,000 in attendance, no home game fell below 40,000, and the club had 25 sellouts.

The Dodgers’ draw, meanwhile, is a bright spot in an overall MLB attendance situation that remains in line to eke out a small increase for a 2025 regular season ending this Sunday. The league is currently up by 0.2% as gains by teams such as the Dodgers and Mets have been countered by sharp drops by teams such as the Cardinals, Orioles, and Twins. The A’s and Rays, meanwhile, are playing this season in minor league venues. 

Still, the full-season increase would mark MLB’s first three-year streak of attendance gains since 2005–2007.

“It’s a continuation of the momentum that we’ve seen in the game,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said last week at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit. “We are playing in two minor-league ballparks, which is a little bit of a drag on your attendance, but despite that, we’re going to be above 70 million [in total attendance] again, which I see as a real accomplishment for the sport. That momentum is really important going into 2026.”