St. Louis Cardinals at Philadelphia Phillies: Final Score & Recap
Line Score
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STL | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 10 | 0 |
| PHI | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 6 | 9 | 0 |
The Story
The Philadelphia Phillies rallied for six runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to defeat the St. Louis Cardinals 6-4 on August 23, 2026, at Citizens Bank Park, completing one of the more dramatic reversals of the season. St. Louis had entered the ninth with a 4-0 lead and appeared firmly in control, having scored single runs in the first, fourth, fifth, and seventh innings. The DiamondIQ model's estimate of a Philadelphia win had stood at 60% before first pitch but reflected the Cardinals' grip on the game through eight frames before swinging to 100% in the Phillies' favor by the final out.
The decisive sequence came entirely at the expense of Cardinals reliever Riley O'Brien. Bryan De La Cruz delivered the game's single most consequential at-bat, lining a single that shifted Philadelphia's win probability by plus 51.9 percentage points, the largest swing of the night by a wide margin. De La Cruz finished as the game's top performer by WPA at plus 51.6% with a RE24 of plus 1.0. Two batters later, Kyle Schwarber drove a home run off O'Brien that added another 42.9 percentage points to Philadelphia's win probability, finishing with a WPA of plus 35.4% and RE24 of plus 0.9. Those two swings accounted for the structural core of the comeback.
The Cardinals' offensive contributions earlier in the game were modest but meaningful in isolation. Alec Burleson's fourth-inning single off Cristopher Sánchez added 9.6 percentage points to St. Louis's win probability and earned him the game's third-highest WPA among batters at plus 8.3% alongside a RE24 of plus 1.4. José Fermín followed in the fifth with a home run off Sánchez worth plus 9.2 percentage points in that moment. On the pitching side, Cardinals reliever Kyle Leahy was the top pitcher by WPA at plus 26.4%, aided in part by J.T. Realmuto grounding into a double play in the fourth that cost Philadelphia 8.0 percentage points. None of it proved sufficient once the Phillies' ninth-inning burst erased the deficit entirely.