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

The St. Louis Cardinals held on to defeat the Cincinnati Reds 2-1 at Great American Ball Park on May 24, 2026, with the DiamondIQ model's estimate of a Cincinnati win falling from a dead-even 50% before first pitch all the way to 0% by the final out. The Cardinals struck early and decisively, plating both of their runs in the first inning and never relinquishing the lead. The Reds managed their only run on a Dane Myers home run off Quinn Mathews in the bottom of the fourth, a swing that shifted Cincinnati's win probability by plus 11.4 points and briefly made things interesting, but St. Louis's pitching staff held firm through the final five frames.

The game's most pivotal sequence came in the bottom of the ninth, where Riley O'Brien closed the door on back-to-back strikeouts with enormous win-probability consequences. Michael Toglia's strikeout to end the game represented a 31.6-point swing in St. Louis's favor, the single largest play of the night by a wide margin. Eugenio Suárez had gone down just before him for a loss of 8.5 points from Cincinnati's perspective, and Tyler Stephenson's groundout in the eighth off Ryne Stanek had already swung the needle 18.7 points toward the Cardinals. Ke'Bryan Hayes's groundout in the second off Mathews further suppressed any early Cincinnati momentum, costing the Reds 11.2 points of win probability.

Among the top performers by the DiamondIQ model's accounting, Toglia led all players with a plus 27.2 WPA figure, driven entirely by that final at-bat in the ninth. Myers paced Cincinnati's offense with a plus 5.5 WPA and a plus 1.0 RE24, his solo shot representing the Reds' lone moment of genuine leverage. On the pitching side, Stanek was the Cardinals' most impactful arm with a plus 23.3 WPA, followed by Mathews at plus 15.1 and Luis Mey at plus 12.6 as St. Louis's bullpen collectively stifled a Cincinnati lineup that managed just three hits on the night.