Herrera's Ninth-Inning Sac Fly Lifts STL Past ARI, 5-4
St. Louis survived a two-run Corbin Carroll bomb in the eighth inning that flipped Arizona's win probability from 28% to 64%, then answered with a walk-off sacrifice fly in the ninth to steal a 5-4 road win on July 18. The Cardinals needed every inch of Masyn Winn's 3-RBI night to hold off a Diamondbacks lineup that refused to go quietly.
St. Louis jumped on Arizona early. In the first inning, Winn singled to center, scoring Burleson and Herrera to put the Cardinals up 2-0 before Arizona had even settled in. The Diamondbacks clawed one back in the second on a Gurriel Jr. sacrifice fly that scored Moreno, then Tim Tawa knotted it at 2-2 with a 381-foot home run to left in the third. The game looked like it was slipping away from St. Louis before JJ Wetherholt answered in the fifth with a 402-foot shot to right center — the kind of swing that looks like it resets a team's entire posture. Cardinals 3, Diamondbacks 2.
The eighth inning is where this game got genuinely uncomfortable for St. Louis. Winn's sacrifice fly to left pushed the lead to 4-2, and it appeared the Cardinals were in control. Then Carroll happened. His 356-foot home run to right scored Perdomo and tied the game at 4-4, swinging Arizona's win probability from 28% all the way to 64% — a 36-point lurch that made the Cardinals' earlier cushion feel like a distant memory. That's the kind of at-bat that defines a season for a player, and Carroll delivered it when Arizona needed it most.
But St. Louis had one more answer. In the ninth, Herrera hit a sacrifice fly to left that scored Fermín and put the Cardinals back on top for good, 5-4. On the mound, Michael McGreevy was the story of the night for St. Louis — 6.1 innings, 6 hits, just 1 earned run, and 5 strikeouts. That's a quality start that looks even better in hindsight given how close the final score was. Merrill Kelly went 5.0 innings for Arizona, allowing 1 earned run, but the Cardinals' bullpen — Riley O'Brien tossing a clean inning of relief — held the line when it mattered. St. Louis escapes with a one-run win that, for about three minutes in the eighth, looked like it had completely slipped away.