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

The Pittsburgh Pirates rallied past the St. Louis Cardinals 7-6 at Busch Stadium on September 2, 2023, completing a comeback that left the DiamondIQ model's estimate of a Cardinals win at 0% after entering the game as a coin flip at 50%. Pittsburgh plated two runs in the ninth inning to seal the victory, capping a back-and-forth contest in which the Cardinals had built a three-run lead in the second inning and appeared positioned to hold on through the late innings.

The decisive blow came in the top of the ninth when Joshua Palacios launched a home run off Drew VerHagen, a swing that shifted win probability by +66.4% and stands as the single most consequential play of the game by a wide margin. That hit erased whatever cushion St. Louis still held and handed Pittsburgh the lead for good. The Cardinals had threatened to answer in the bottom of the ninth, with Jordan Walker drawing a hit by pitch off David Bednar that generated +17.5% in win probability, but Lars Nootbaar's strikeout to end the inning swung things back by -30.4% and closed the door on any St. Louis comeback. Walker had earlier kept the Cardinals in contention with a seventh-inning home run off Colin Selby worth +26.4% in win probability, and Miguel Andujar's double off Jacob Barnes in the sixth added +16.4% for Pittsburgh's push.

Palacios finished as the game's top performer by WPA at +66.4% with a RE24 of +1.7, while Walker led all Cardinals batters at +43.1% WPA and +2.2 RE24 despite ending up on the losing side. Tommy Edman contributed a +19.0% WPA performance for St. Louis. On the mound, John King paced the Cardinals' relievers with +17.9% WPA, followed by Giovanny Gallegos at +6.6% and Andre Pallante at +6.3%, though none of their individual efforts were enough to counteract Palacios's game-altering ninth-inning blast.