Washington Nationals at Cincinnati Reds: Final Score & Recap
Line Score
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WSH | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 10 | 13 | 2 |
| CIN | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 10 | 0 |
The Story
The Washington Nationals erased Cincinnati's pre-game edge and pulled away for a 10-4 victory at Great American Ball Park on May 12, 2026, handing the Reds a result the DiamondIQ model had assigned a 59 percent home win probability before first pitch. Washington's offense was quiet through the first two innings before scratching across two runs in the third, and the game turned decisively in the fourth and fifth frames. The Nationals finished with 13 hits against two errors of their own, while Cincinnati committed none but could not recover from a sequence of momentum-shifting at-bats.
The fourth inning proved pivotal in opposite directions. JJ Bleday drew a walk off Miles Mikolas that added 13.0 percent to Washington's win probability, and though Tyler Stephenson reached on a fielder's choice off Brad Lord to push the Reds' probability up 10.9 percent, Ke'Bryan Hayes immediately grounded into a double play off Lord that swung the game 18.1 percent back toward the Nationals — the single largest win-probability shift of the contest. Washington then broke the game open in the top of the fifth, when Daylen Lile connected on a home run off Luis Mey for a 14.8 percent swing, followed by Luis García Jr.'s home run off Sam Moll for another 11.2 percent shift. Those back-to-back blows gave Washington a commanding cushion and accounted for four of the five biggest plays of the game.
Lile finished as the game's most impactful offensive performer, posting a combined 26.1 percent WPA and a RE24 of plus-3.2. García added 22.8 percent WPA and plus-1.9 RE24, while Bleday contributed 14.3 percent WPA and a game-high RE24 of plus-3.4. On the pitching side, Brad Lord led Washington's staff with 12.4 percent WPA, and the Nationals tacked on two insurance runs in the eighth before Cincinnati's pair in the ninth made the final margin 10-4. The DiamondIQ model favors Washington's offensive depth in close situations, and that edge materialized emphatically on Tuesday night.