Chicago Cubs at St. Louis Cardinals: Final Score & Recap
Line Score
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CHC | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 0 |
| STL | 2 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | - | 5 | 8 | 0 |
The Story
The St. Louis Cardinals handled the Chicago Cubs 5-1 at Busch Stadium on May 31, 2026, a result that moved the DiamondIQ model's win probability estimate from a pre-game 55 percent home-team lean to a final 100 percent as St. Louis built an insurmountable early cushion. The Cardinals did their most decisive damage in the first and third innings, pushing across two runs in the bottom of the first and three more in the bottom of the third to effectively settle the contest before the Cubs could find any rhythm against Matthew Liberatore.
The third inning was where the game was truly decided on a win-probability basis. Masyn Winn's single off Ethan Roberts in the bottom of the third was the single most impactful play of the night, swinging win probability 11.7 percent in St. Louis's favor, and Alec Burleson followed with a single off Roberts that added another 6.8 percent. That sequence of Cardinals hits in the third left Chicago in a significant hole from which the offense never meaningfully threatened to escape. The Cubs did manufacture a brief moment in the seventh when Michael Conforto's double off Hunter Dobbins produced a 6.8 percent win-probability swing, the largest positive play of the game for Chicago, but Dansby Swanson's strikeout immediately erased that opening with a 6.0 percent swing back toward St. Louis, and the Cubs went on to score only once, in the sixth.
Matthew Liberatore was the pitching story, finishing as the top performer on the mound by a wide margin with a WPA of plus 17.9 percent, suppressing a Cubs lineup that managed seven hits but only the single run. Winn led all position players at plus 14.6 percent WPA and a RE24 of plus 0.5, while Burleson contributed plus 7.2 percent WPA and a RE24 of plus 1.5, giving him the best run-environment figure of any player in the game. Conforto's double made him the Cubs' lone positive contributor among the top performers, finishing at plus 6.8 percent WPA and a RE24 of plus 0.6 in an otherwise quiet night for Chicago's offense.