St. Louis Cardinals at Pittsburgh Pirates: Final Score & Recap
Line Score
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STL | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| PIT | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | - | 2 | 10 | 0 |
The Story
The Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the St. Louis Cardinals 2-1 at PNC Park on June 4, 2023, in a low-scoring affair that the DiamondIQ model's estimate had firmly favoring the home side from the outset, opening with a 65% pre-game win probability for Pittsburgh that eventually climbed to 100% by the final out. The game's scoring was front-loaded and decisive: Pittsburgh plated both of its runs in the first inning and then leaned on its pitching staff to protect that lead across eight more frames, holding St. Louis to a single run on five hits with no errors on either side.
The lone significant swing in St. Louis's favor came in the seventh inning when Andrew Knizner connected on a home run off Rich Hill, a play that carried a win-probability added of plus 12.3%, briefly tightening the contest. That, however, proved to be the Cardinals' high-water mark. Pittsburgh's pitching responded with authority the rest of the way, and in the ninth inning David Bednar retired the Cardinals in order on key outs, with Jordan Walker's flyout registering a minus 8.9% win-probability impact and Paul DeJong's flyout contributing another minus 7.1%, effectively closing the door. A Luken Baker single, worth plus 7.6% WPA, provided a momentary flicker of Cardinals life, but it went nowhere. Connor Joe's strikeout in the eighth, yielding plus 7.8% WPA from Pittsburgh's perspective, underscored how thoroughly Jordan Hicks worked through that portion of the Pittsburgh lineup.
On the strength of the DiamondIQ model's top-performer metrics, the game belonged to Pittsburgh's pitching and a handful of contributors on both sides. Rich Hill led all pitchers with plus 15.9% WPA, followed closely by David Bednar at plus 15.2% and Yohan Ramírez at plus 10.8%, a collective effort that smothered a Cardinals offense generating only five hits. Among position players, Connor Joe led Pittsburgh with plus 6.4% WPA, while Tommy Edman paced the Cardinals at plus 3.4% WPA with a plus 0.9 RE24, one of the few Cardinals to generate any meaningful run-expectancy value in a game Pittsburgh controlled from the opening frame.