+Eldredge answered immediately when Cardinals grabbed the lead
+Room traffic ran roughly 3x the season median
McGreevy and Webb had the ball for the series opener at Oracle Park, first pitch 5:10 PM PT, and the more interesting name walking in was the home starter. Webb came off consecutive disasters — he failed to escape the third inning against Pittsburgh in what was reported as the worst start of his career, and it followed a similarly short outing at Boston. McGreevy, by contrast, was fresh off a win over the Dodgers, even if it cost him 90 pitches to get through 5 innings.
Michael McGreevy
(7-9)·3.84 ERA
Sep 1 @ Dodgers
W
5.0IP
4ER
4K
2BB
90P
09/07 Lineup
Logan Webb
(8-9)·4.31 ERA
Sep 1 @ Pirates
ND
2.0IP
9ER
1K
2BB
65P
09/07 Lineup
The injury report explains a lot of why these two clubs looked so different on paper. San Francisco is already without Willy Adames and Matt Chapman on the left side of the infield, and the absences run into the bullpen too — Sam Hentges, Rowan Wick and JT Brubaker are all out, thinning a pen that would need to cover for Webb if he got knocked out early again. St. Louis has its own holes up the middle, with Masyn Winn, JJ Wetherholt and Blaze Jordan all unavailable, but the Cardinals arrived with Alec Burleson locked in during what's being described as a real playoff push.
None of that mattered much once the game actually started. Burleson put the Cardinals on the board with a 431-foot homer into the bay in the sixth, trimming a 3-run Giants lead, and it kicked off a night where the lead changed hands deep into extra innings.
St. Louis kept clawing. Nathan Church's RBI double in the 7th made it a 1-run game, and José Fermín's sacrifice fly in the 9th — scoring Joshua Baez after an infield single — tied it at 3. The Cardinals even grabbed the lead in the 10th on Leo Bernal's bloop single, only for Bryce Eldredge to answer immediately for San Francisco. It finally ended in the 11th, when Shay Whitcomb chopped a high one over the drawn-in infield to send Oracle Park home happy, 5-4.
The Polymarket room could feel every swing of it — traffic ran roughly 3x the season-median MLB crowd, and the busiest stretch of the night landed right as St. Louis tied the game. "Cards are comeback specialists," one poster holding St. Louis wrote, and "Lets cook" was still going around by the time the game reached extras. It just didn't hold up in the end.
Cardinals 4, Giants 5: Final Score & Odds Recap — Whitcomb's 11th-Inning Knock Walks Off Cardinals In San Francisco
