The St. Louis Cardinals held off the Pittsburgh Pirates 3-2 at LECOM Park on March 5, 2026, with the DiamondIQ model's estimate of a Pittsburgh win falling from a 54 percent pre-game home probability all the way to zero by the final out. The Cardinals scored in the fourth, added a run in the sixth, and pushed across an insurance run in the eighth, while the Pirates mounted their most dangerous moment in the bottom of the sixth when Alika Williams connected on a home run off Quinn Mathews that shifted win probability by 24.8 percent in Pittsburgh's favor and briefly made it a one-run game. That swing represented the Pirates' best shot at turning the contest around, and it gave the home club enough life to keep the outcome in doubt heading into the late innings.
Jimmy Crooks delivered the go-ahead blow with a single off Cam Sanders in the top of the eighth, a hit that moved the win-probability needle 18.3 percent toward St. Louis and gave the Cardinals their ultimately decisive one-run cushion. From there, the Cardinals bullpen closed the door methodically, with Justin Bruihl recording a strikeout of Dominic Fletcher in the bottom of the eighth that shifted probability 12.9 percent back toward St. Louis, accounting for the largest single defensive contribution of the late innings. Ryan Fernandez finished it in the ninth by striking out Duce Gourson, a sequence that carried a 27.0 percent win-probability swing and sealed the Cardinals' road victory.
By WPA, Gourson finished as the top individual performer at plus-24.3 percent, driven almost entirely by his ninth-inning at-bat that kept Pittsburgh's last threat alive before the final out, while Williams posted plus-18.6 percent and a run-expectancy contribution of plus-1.5 RE24 on the strength of his sixth-inning home run. Crooks added plus-18.3 percent and plus-0.9 RE24 for his pivotal eighth-inning single. On the pitching side, Bruihl led all pitchers at plus-23.3 percent WPA, followed by Dustin May at plus-12.0 percent and Derek Diamond at plus-8.7 percent, collectively neutralizing a Pittsburgh offense that finished with five hits but could not find the clutch moment to match Williams's sixth-inning surge.
Analysis generated by DiamondIQ's model.