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The Phillies Start the Postseason as World Series Favorites
By Joe Tansey
Published:
The Philadelphia Phillies are the favorite to win the 2025 World Series at ESPN Bet:
They’re +400 to win the Fall Classic as the postseason begins Tuesday with the wild-card round.
Being the No. 1 seed and favorite is one thing. Winning as the top dog is another, as we’ve witnessed firsthand from the last few postseasons.
Since the introduction of the six-team playoff format in 2022, only three No. 1 seeds advanced to the World Series. Two of them played it last year.
The Phillies in 2022 and then the Rangers and Diamondbacks in 2023 advanced to the World Series out of the wild-card round. The Yankees and Dodgers quelled the debate about the week-long break affecting top seeds last year, but it’s a discussion that I’m sure will permeate your timelines once we’re done arguing about A.J. Brown’s Twitter posts.
If you pull back the trends over the last decade as a whole, we’ve only witnessed two World Series matchups between top seeds. The other was in the 2020 COVID season between the Dodgers and Rays.
I’d argue, and quite strongly at that, that those trends apply more to the American League, where things could get incredibly bonkers over the next few weeks. Only seven games separated the top-seeded Blue Jays from the No. 6 seed Tigers in the final regular-season standings.
So there’s plenty of reason to believe why the odds are less in favor of the AL sides winning the World Series. The Mariners are +500 and the Blue Jays sit at +750. The Phils would have home-field advantage over both teams, and all of them in the AL in fact, and it’ll be tough to beat the Phils at The Bank, like it has been all season.
Bossman Kinkead outlined a handful of key stats this morning that further drive home why the Phils are a worthy World Series favorite.
One of the few stats you could use against the Phils is they went 2-4 against the Brewers, but they won two of three in Milwaukee in September when it mattered more. They also won two of three at Dodger Stadium this month, another sign they will travel well in the postseason.
If the Phils travel well, like they did in Milwaukee and LA, and continue to play well at home, where they were 55-26 in the regular season, that’s the ideal formula for postseason success.
Bossman Kinkead: In addition to hammering the Phils’ World Series future, I also recommend getting into a new PA online casino. Check out our BetParx Casino promo code, perhaps.
Joe Tansey writes sports betting posts for Crossing Broad and also covers the Philadelphia Union for his Substack site, Union Soccer Blog.