St. Louis Cardinals at Pittsburgh Pirates: Final Score & Recap

The Pittsburgh Pirates erased a five-run deficit to defeat the St. Louis Cardinals 7-5 at PNC Park on June 2, 2023, in one of the more dramatic reversals of the early season. The Cardinals had seized control in the top of the third inning, when Brendan Donovan and Nolan Arenado hit back-to-back home runs off Roansy Contreras, adding 18.9% and 12.7% to St. Louis's win probability respectively and staking the visitors to a 5-0 lead. At that point, the DiamondIQ model's estimate of a Pittsburgh victory had been significantly suppressed from the pre-game home win probability of 62%, and the Cardinals carried that advantage into the seventh inning without further scoring from either side.

The seventh inning belonged entirely to the Pirates and, above all, to Ke'Bryan Hayes. Pittsburgh sent ten batters to the plate against Giovanny Gallegos, who absorbed the full damage. A Carlos Santana double shifted the DiamondIQ model's estimate by 14.2%, and a Joshua Palacios home run added another 14.1%, but it was Hayes's three-run home run off Gallegos that served as the evening's decisive blow, swinging win probability by 47.3% and lifting Pittsburgh to a lead it would not relinquish. The Pirates scored all six of their seventh-inning runs in that sequence, turning a five-run deficit into a two-run advantage. Hayes finished as the game's top performer by WPA at plus 48.7% with a RE24 of plus 3.1, while Santana contributed plus 16.1% WPA and a RE24 of plus 1.8.

On the pitching side, Jack Flaherty led Pittsburgh's staff with plus 13.5% WPA, followed by Colin Holderman at plus 8.1% and closer David Bednar at plus 6.3%, the latter two preserving the lead through the eighth and ninth innings as the DiamondIQ model's estimate reached 100% by the game's conclusion.