Miami Marlins at Houston Astros: Final Score & Recap

The Houston Astros defeated the Miami Marlins 5-2 on July 22, 2026, at Daikin Park, turning what the DiamondIQ model opened as a near coin-flip — a 52 percent home win probability — into a final estimate of 100 percent by the game's end. Houston's scoring came in clusters, with single runs in the second and third innings providing an early cushion before the Astros broke the game open with three runs in the eighth.

The decisive swings belonged to Jeremy Peña and Yordan Alvarez, both working against Sandy Alcantara. Peña's home run in the bottom of the third added 9.4 percentage points of win probability and represented the first significant momentum shift of the night. Alvarez delivered the knockout blow in the bottom of the eighth, launching a home run off Alcantara that swung win probability by 25.1 points, the single largest play of the game. That at-bat more than erased a brief Miami threat in the top of the fourth, when Javier Sanoja's double and Joe Mack's subsequent single off Peter Lambert combined for a 21.6-point swing in the Marlins' favor — the lone sequence where Miami meaningfully threatened to take control. Alvarez did offset his own impact earlier, grounding into a double play in the fifth that cost Houston 6.6 points of win probability.

By final WPA accounting, Peña finished as the game's top performer at plus-19.4 percent with a RE24 of plus-1.3, while Alvarez posted plus-17.5 percent and a RE24 of plus-1.1 despite the costly double play. Isaac Paredes added plus-8.5 percent with a RE24 of plus-0.9. On the pitching side, Steven Okert led all pitchers at plus-10.6 percent, followed by Enyel De Los Santos at plus-8.3 and Peter Lambert at plus-7.0, the latter's contribution coming in relief after allowing the Marlins' fourth-inning damage. Houston finished without an error on nine hits, while Miami committed one error across seven hits in the loss.