ST. LOUIS -- On Friday night, after a Reds victory in the first game of this three-game set, closer Emilio Pagán laid out a simple -- if ambitious -- hope for his team in the waning days ahead of the Aug. 3 Trade Deadline.\n\n“Just trying to make it weird,” he said that night after recording his 10th save. “We’re trying to win as many games as we can to hopefully put us in a spot where you know guys aren’t leaving and we’re adding some guys, and we can go on a run.
On Sunday, it got a little weirder.\n\nSal Stewart’s pinch-hit RBI single leading off the 10th inning broke a stalemate and gave the Reds their first lead of the day -- and the only lead they would need. They grinded to a 5-3 win in the series finale, taking the three-game set from the Cardinals and giving oxygen to their hopes of keeping the band together.
The collective Reds pitching staff did yeoman’s work to keep the Cardinals off the board and give the offense time to strike, even as both teams labored in oppressive conditions with the temperature on the field feeling as though it climbed well into the triple digits. St. Louis did not record a hit between Iván Herrera’s third-inning homer and Alec Burleson’s eighth-inning single, which deflected off Nathaniel Lowe’s glove at first base.
Andrew Abbott recorded his ninth quality start of 2026, striking out four and walking four as he scattered three hits. Pierce Johnson and Tejay Antone followed with scoreless relief outings, and Brock Burke entered with the bases loaded in the eighth to induce a harmless flyout from Lars Nootbaar.
“We started out good, and then we kind of hit a wall, but we knew that we’d bounce back,” Abbott said. “We just didn’t know when.”\n\nJulian Garcia pitched the 10th en route to recording his first Major League save. The 31-year-old rookie was credited with his first big league win in Friday night’s victory, making for two clubhouse celebrations in the span of three days.\n\n“Just grab the ball and throw it,” Garcia said with modesty. “I’ve played baseball for my whole life. I mean, it’s nothing different. Just playing catch with the catcher.”\n\nElly De La Cruz and Ke’Bryan Hayes each provided solo homers for Cincinnati to account for their offensive output in the first nine innings. Hayes’ homer was his first since May 4, having missed nearly two months with a bulging disc in his back. Nathaniel Lowe provided his first three-hit game of the season, giving the Reds a little extra breathing room with a two-run single following Stewart’s tiebreaker.\n\nThat hit became the winning margin, as St. Louis was able to push across a third run in the bottom of the inning.\n\n“Anything’s possible right now with the way things are shaping up,” Lowe assessed. “We had a winning road trip, so anything can happen.”