Atlanta Braves at St. Louis Cardinals: Final Score & Recap

The Atlanta Braves handed the St. Louis Cardinals a 5-2 defeat at Busch Stadium on April 5, 2023, doing the bulk of their damage early and never relinquishing the lead. Atlanta scored three runs in the first inning and added one more in the second, building a 4-0 cushion before St. Louis could respond. The DiamondIQ model entered the game assigning the Cardinals a 54 percent home win probability, but that figure eroded quickly as the Braves seized control, ultimately falling to zero by the final out.

The decisive swings in win probability came in the game's opening frames. The single largest play of the night was Jordan Walker's strikeout against Bryce Elder in the bottom of the second, a moment that shifted the Cardinals' win probability by negative 10.4 percent and effectively buried St. Louis's early hopes of climbing back into the game. Nolan Arenado's forceout in the bottom of the first, also off Elder, carried a similar weight at negative 8.3 percent. On the Atlanta side, Austin Riley's pop out in the top of the second added 8.6 percent to the Braves' win probability in context, a reflection of how the Cardinals' failure to contain Atlanta's lineup in those innings compounded the damage.

Bryce Elder was the night's dominant individual performer, finishing with a WPA of plus 33.9 percent, an extraordinary accumulation that underscored how thoroughly he controlled St. Louis across his outing. Among position players, Matt Olson led Atlanta's contributors with a WPA of plus 9.5 percent and a RE24 of plus 3.0, while Austin Riley posted plus 7.9 percent WPA. The Cardinals managed two late runs, one each in the seventh and ninth, but Jesse Chavez closed things out in the ninth, aided by Tommy Edman's pop out that added 6.3 percent to Atlanta's win probability, sealing a game that was never truly in doubt after the opening innings.