The St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Baltimore Orioles 7-2 on March 9, 2026, at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium, turning what the DiamondIQ model opened as a modest 54 percent home-team advantage into a dominant wire-to-wire outcome. St. Louis built its lead through a series of well-timed power swings, and Baltimore never found a consistent enough offensive response to threaten the Cardinals' grip on the game.
The decisive sequence unfolded across three separate innings anchored by the long ball. Chase Davis got St. Louis on the board in the bottom of the third with a home run off Trey Gibson, a swing the DiamondIQ model valued at an 18.1 percent win-probability shift. Baltimore briefly answered in the fourth and fifth innings, as Leody Taveras delivered a triple off Matthew Liberatore for a 7.3 percent swing and Sam Huff followed with a solo home run in the fifth worth 12.3 percent — the latter representing the Orioles' most impactful moment of the afternoon. But JJ Wetherholt erased that momentum in the bottom of the sixth with a home run off Nestor German that registered as the single biggest play of the game at plus 23.9 percent win probability added, effectively closing the door on any Baltimore comeback. Joshua Baez added a home run in the seventh, also off German, for another 12.6 percent swing to push the final to 7-2.
Wetherholt led all position players with a plus 20.6 percent WPA and plus 1.4 RE24, while Davis posted plus 16.6 percent WPA and the game's top RE24 mark of plus 2.5. On the mound, Ryan Fernandez and Matt Svanson anchored the Cardinals' relief effort, contributing plus 7.2 and plus 7.1 percent WPA respectively to preserve the comfortable victory.
Analysis generated by DiamondIQ's model.