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.
“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.
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On Sunday, it got a little weirder.
Sal 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.”
Julian 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.
“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.”
Elly 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.
That hit became the winning margin, as St. Louis was able to push across a third run in the bottom of the inning.
“Anything’s possible right now with the way things are shaping up,” Lowe assessed. “We had a winning road trip, so anything can happen.”
Spencer Steer exited in the midst of an at-bat in the fifth inning with right wrist pain after taking an uncomfortable swing against Cardinals starter Kyle Leahy.
Steer lunged across home plate and fouled a pitch off to the stands down the first-base line, shaking out his right hand and circling around the plate before manager Terry Francona and an athletic trainer met him on the field. After a brief conversation, Steer was replaced by Edwin Arroyo, who lined out to shortstop after inheriting an 0-2 count.
Steer has played every position other than pitcher, catcher and shortstop for the Reds this season, piling up consistent offensive production even as he bounces around the diamond. His 16 homers and 40 RBIs both rank fourth on the Reds in 2026, and he has been widely reported as a possible trade target as a righty power bat ahead of the Deadline.
“He didn’t fight me to come out of that game,” Francona said of Steer. “That makes me nervous. We’ll get him looked at, we’ll get him imaged, and then they’re setting up an appointment with the hand specialist.”
Of course, if the Reds continue on the path to making the race weird, Steer’s availability on the trade market could become a moot point. Despite being five games back of Arizona for the third National League Wild Card spot, Cincinnati’s clubhouse remains uninterested in considering the possibility that they might be seeing more departures than arrivals in the coming days.
“I like this group a lot, so anything can happen,” Lowe insisted. “We just need to perform a little sharper every night and then just keep some momentum.”
That wouldn’t be the weirdest possible outcome, but for the Reds, it would be just weird enough.