St. Louis Cardinals at Arizona Diamondbacks: Final Score & Recap
Line Score
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STL | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 8 | 0 |
| AZ | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 8 | 2 |
The Story
The St. Louis Cardinals held off the Arizona Diamondbacks 5-4 at Chase Field on July 17, 2026, in a game that remained tightly contested from wire to wire. The DiamondIQ model's estimate opened with a slight lean toward Arizona at 51% home win probability, but by the final out that figure had collapsed to zero. St. Louis jumped out quickly with two runs in the first inning, and the teams traded single runs through the early going before JJ Wetherholt gave the Cardinals a critical insurance run with a fifth-inning home run off Merrill Kelly, a swing that shifted win probability by 12.7 points in St. Louis's favor and represented the single biggest offensive contribution by any Cardinals batter on the night.
The game's most dramatic sequence arrived in the eighth inning, when Corbin Carroll launched a home run off Luis Gastelum that swung win probability 31.9 points toward Arizona, pulling the Diamondbacks within a run and setting up a genuine threat in the ninth. That blast made Carroll the second-most impactful batter of the evening by WPA at plus-19.2%. Arizona then loaded the equation further with a Ildemaro Vargas triple in the seventh that had already shifted momentum by 12.7 points, but the Cardinals' bullpen answered when it mattered most. Riley O'Brien induced a game-ending flyout from Vargas in the ninth, a 27.2-point swing against Arizona, and a strikeout of Ketel Marte proved equally pivotal at plus-21.4 points for St. Louis in that same inning.
On the Cardinals' side, Wetherholt led all batters with a plus-19.7% WPA and a RE24 of plus-0.6, while Masyn Winn was the most run-impactful player in the game at plus-2.4 RE24 alongside a plus-12.9% WPA contribution. On the mound, George Soriano was the Cardinals' most valuable arm at plus-17.8% WPA, followed by Michael McGreevy at plus-12.2% and Kevin Ginkel at plus-6.6%. St. Louis finished with nine hits and no errors, while Arizona committed one error in a loss that ended their pre-game probability advantage entirely.