St. Louis Cardinals at Cincinnati Reds: Final Score & Recap

The Cincinnati Reds walked off the St. Louis Cardinals 7-6 in eleven innings on May 23, 2026, at Great American Ball Park, completing a comeback that began with the DiamondIQ model's estimate sitting at a dead-even 49 percent for Cincinnati before first pitch and finishing at 100 percent in favor of the Reds.

The decisive stretch of the game ran through the fifth inning and extra frames. Elly De La Cruz delivered the contest's most consequential early blow, a home run off Kyle Leahy in the bottom of the fifth that swung win probability 26.0 percentage points in Cincinnati's favor and helped the Reds plate five runs in that inning alone. St. Louis mounted a serious threat in the top of the ninth, when Jordan Walker's single off Tony Santillan shifted the probability landscape by 33.4 percentage points — the single largest play of the night by WPA — as the Cardinals pushed across two runs to force extra innings. A Bryan Torres fielder's choice out in the top of the tenth, off Pierce Johnson, erased 23.5 percentage points of Cardinals leverage and kept Cincinnati alive. The Reds then closed it out in the eleventh against Riley O'Brien, with P.J. Higgins laying down a sacrifice bunt that added 19.5 percentage points and Blake Dunn reaching on a fielder's choice that added another 16.9 to send the home side home winners.

Walker finished as the game's top overall performer, accumulating a WPA of plus 51.2 percent and an RE24 of plus 3.0 despite being on the losing side, a reflection of how severely his ninth-inning hit restructured the game's probabilities. De La Cruz followed at plus 29.9 percent WPA and plus 2.0 RE24, while Higgins contributed plus 19.6 percent WPA in his brief but critical eleventh-inning role. On the pitching side, Graham Ashcraft led Cincinnati's staff with a plus 15.9 percent WPA, with Brock Burke and Gordon Graceffo each adding positive contributions to preserve the eventual win.