Cincinnati Reds at Kansas City Royals: Final Score & Recap

The Cincinnati Reds edged the Kansas City Royals 5-4 in ten innings on June 12, 2023, at Kauffman Stadium, completing a comeback win that the DiamondIQ model had assigned Kansas City only a 33 percent chance of winning before first pitch. The Reds built their lead gradually, scoring in the third and adding two in the sixth before plating another in the ninth, but Kansas City refused to go quietly. The most significant single swing of the game came in the bottom of the ninth, when Salvador Perez connected for a home run off Buck Farmer, a blast that shifted win probability by 48.9 percent and tied the game, forcing extra innings. That one at-bat accounted for the bulk of Perez's game-high plus-57.7 percent WPA, making him the central figure of the evening despite ultimately ending up on the losing side.

The tenth inning proved decisive, and in a counterintuitive way it was Cincinnati's outs that sealed the result. Elly De La Cruz grounded into a double play off Carlos Hernandez, a sequence that added 16.6 percent win probability for the Royals, followed immediately by Matt McLain's groundout which added another 16.4 percent. Those two plays effectively stranded the extra-inning runner and limited Cincinnati to a single run. Jonathan India's fielder's choice, worth plus-15.1 percent WPA, accounted for that lone run and proved to be enough. In the bottom half, Maikel Garcia's flyout off Ricky Karcher added 15.5 percent win probability to Cincinnati's column, ending the Kansas City threat and securing the final out. Bobby Witt Jr. finished as the second-most impactful Royals bat at plus-15.8 percent WPA, while on the mound Zack Greinke led all pitchers at plus-14.1 percent WPA, followed by Aroldis Chapman at plus-10.6 percent and Alex Young at plus-10.2 percent for Cincinnati.