The Cardinals and Reds have been playing each other since Monday. Thursday afternoon, finally, it ends.
A postponement earlier in the year turned this into a five-game series, an oddity in the modern schedule, and it is dead even. St. Louis took the opener of Monday's doubleheader 2-1 and won Tuesday 3-0 behind Kyle Leahy. Cincinnati took the nightcap 6-5 in ten innings on a walk-off and came back Wednesday to win 5-4. Two apiece. Whoever wins the matinee wins the series.
For a Cardinals club at 65-63 and running out of runway, that is not nothing.
How to Watch: Cardinals at Reds
Date: Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026
First pitch: 12:40 p.m. ET / 11:40 a.m. CT
Venue: Great American Ball Park, Cincinnati
Streaming: Cardinals.TV and Reds.TV
Records: St. Louis 65-63, Cincinnati 61-66
There is no national window on this one. It is not on ESPN, whose exclusive package skews to Sundays, and it is not a Fox property — Baseball Night in America is a Saturday show. This is a local broadcast on the clubs' direct-to-consumer streams, which for a getaway-day matinee in August is exactly what you would expect.
If you are looking for the nearest thing to a showcase game on Thursday's slate, that is Nationals at Rangers at 8:05 p.m. ET on FS1, with Jacob deGrom starting. It has no bearing on this race.
Probable Pitchers
St. Louis: Michael McGreevy, RHP (5-9, 3.48 ERA, 91 K)
Cincinnati: Brady Singer, RHP (5-11, 4.66 ERA, 104 K)
McGreevy's win-loss record is a bad way to look at him. A 3.48 ERA on a team that has blown 32 leads this season is the more honest number, and he has already handled this lineup once — five strikeouts against Cincinnati on June 7. He also won the middle game of the Cubs series last weekend, an 8-4 result at Wrigley.
Singer's season line is the wrong way to read him right now. The 4.66 ERA is ugly and his expected numbers are uglier, but over his last seven starts he has a 3.95 ERA and a 1.25 WHIP with 33 strikeouts in 43.1 innings. He has been better lately than a 5-11 record on a 61-66 team suggests. The Reds have simply not scored for him.
There is one more thing in this game worth your attention, and it is in the top two spots of the lineup cards.
JJ Wetherholt leads off for St. Louis. Sal Stewart bats second for Cincinnati.
Those are the two names in the National League Rookie of the Year conversation, and they are facing each other on a Thursday afternoon in a five-game series nobody planned.
Take the win-loss records off both clubs and this is the most interesting head-to-head on the board.
Odds and prediction
FanDuel has St. Louis as a narrow road favorite at -108, with Cincinnati at +100 and the total set at 9.
The case for the Cardinals is mostly a case against the Reds' bats. Over the last thirty days Cincinnati has the worst wRC+ in the National League at 74 and the highest strikeout rate in baseball at 28.2%. St. Louis has not been good over that stretch either — 18th in the majors in wRC+ — but 18th against 29th is a real gap.
The counter is Singer's recent form. A 3.95 ERA over seven starts is not a pushover, and the market agrees: a game priced at -108 and +100 is a coin flip with juice.
Two teams going nowhere, leaning slightly toward the visitors, with the total the more interesting side if you think Cincinnati keeps striking out.
Now the part St. Louis fans actually want to know
Here is the National League wild card race on Thursday morning, division leaders removed.
WC1 — Chicago Cubs, 74-54
WC2 — Philadelphia Phillies, 70-58
WC3 — San Diego Padres, 68-60
Arizona Diamondbacks, 67-61, 1.0 back
St. Louis Cardinals, 65-63, 3.0 back
Miami Marlins, 64-64, 4.0 back
Pittsburgh Pirates, 63-66, 5.5 back
Cincinnati Reds, 61-66, 6.5 back
Washington Nationals, 61-67, 7.0 back
Three games out with 34 to play sounds like a race. Baseball Reference does not agree.
Postseason odds, with movement over the last seven days:
Chicago Cubs — 98.9%
Philadelphia Phillies — 87.4%, up 34.9 points in a week
San Diego Padres — 48.6%
Arizona Diamondbacks — 43.0%
St. Louis Cardinals — 13.6%
Miami Marlins — 5.7%, down 20.0 points in a week
Pittsburgh Pirates — 2.2%
Washington Nationals — 1.8%
Cincinnati Reds — 0.1%
St. Louis lost six points of postseason probability in a single day and twenty over the last month. Philadelphia has won six straight and added nearly 29 points in thirty days. Miami is in free fall.
The schedule nobody is checking
Here is what separates two teams sitting a game apart in the standings.
Baseball Reference tracks remaining strength of schedule as rSOS, where a higher number means a harder run-in and zero is league average. Arizona sits at -0.2, the softest remaining slate of any team in this race and the only below-average number among the contenders. San Diego and Washington are dead even at 0.0, Philadelphia at +0.1, St. Louis and Pittsburgh at +0.2. The three hardest belong to the Cubs, the Marlins and the Reds, all at +0.3.
That matters most at the bottom of the bracket. Arizona is a game behind San Diego for the last spot, gained 9.3 points of postseason probability in a single day, and gets the easier road. The projections have the Diamondbacks at 84.6-77.4 and the Padres at 85.1-76.9 — half a game apart over five weeks. That is the real fight, and the schedule is leaning Arizona's way.
St. Louis, at +0.2, is on the wrong side of average, and the calendar backs it up.
What's left for the Cardinals
Thirty-four games, and the front half of them is not kind.
It starts Friday in Philadelphia, three against the hottest team in the National League, a club that has won six in a row and added nearly 29 points of postseason probability in a month. From there St. Louis comes home for Baltimore and Pittsburgh, which is the softest stretch on the board and probably the last real chance to bank games.
Then September gets ugly. Three at the Dodgers with 10:10 p.m. Eastern first pitches, three at Colorado, three at San Francisco — nine straight on the West Coast in the middle of a pennant chase, if it still is one by then. The homestand that follows brings the White Sox, the Giants again and Washington, before the season ends on the road with three at Pittsburgh and three at Milwaukee.
The projection has them finishing 82-80.
The 2006 ghost
There is a version of this that St. Louis fans have earned the right to bring up, and it is not crazy.
In 2006, after 105 wins in 2004 and 100 in 2005, the Cardinals went 83-78 — the fewest wins of any World Series champion in the modern era — and won the whole thing. Eighty-three. Barely over .500, into October on fumes, and then they beat San Diego, beat the Mets, and beat Detroit.
This club is projected for 82. The parallel is right there, and Tony La Russa, who managed that team, has been around the ballpark and the broadcast this season, which has not helped anyone in St. Louis stop thinking about it.
The difference is the door. In 2006 the Cardinals only had to win a division that nobody else wanted. In 2026 they are three games behind a wild card with four teams ahead of them and a projection that says 82 wins is not enough.
Still. Eighty-three and a ring is a real thing that happened, and it happened here.
The lineup card
One complication for anyone holding onto that.
Thursday's Cardinals lineup at Great American: JJ Wetherholt at short, Ivan Herrera at DH, Alec Burleson at first, Jordan Walker in right, Joshua Baez in left, Nathan Church in center, Bryan Torres at second, Blaze Jordan at third, Jimmy Crooks catching.
That is a young lineup. In the third week of August, three games out, that is a decision as much as it is a lineup.
Season notes
The Cardinals have never led this division. They spent three days in first place, the last of them April 10, and were as far back as 15.5 games on Aug. 1. Their high-water mark was nine over .500 on June 16, and they have not been more than three under all year.
The shape of it is in the margins. They have 26 comeback wins, including one from six runs down, against 32 blown leads, one of those from seven runs up. Six walk-off wins and five walk-off losses. Seven times shut out, nine shutouts thrown. A team that has been in almost every game it has played and finished on the right side of just over half of them.
It has been, in other words, exactly a 65-63 season. Thursday at 12:40 is a chance to at least win the series.
Odds via FanDuel. Projections and playoff odds via Baseball Reference. Records through Aug. 19.