ST. LOUIS — The Cardinals obviously haven’t won as much as they need and haven’t won as easily as they want, and even when they do, it’s sometimes followed by a carbuncle like Tuesday’s loss. But they emerged from that mess to filch an improbable series victory from Arizona by relying Wednesday on how they have won.

This is the way they most often will.

Starter Kyle Gibson darted out of traffic in the first inning and provided six solid innings, relying on superb defense and buying time for the Cardinals to jigsaw together some offense. A single here. A double there. Masyn Winn’s aggressive jump and a timely hit. Piece by piece, they went until a wild pitch from former teammate Jordan Montgomery invited the tie-breaking run that sent them toward a 5-1 victory Wednesday at Busch Stadium and their first series-finale win of the season.

The starter was steady. The defense was solid. The bullpen was resolute. The offense, still wheezing as a whole, was enough. The recipe is clear.

“This is the style of game we’re going to need in order to get to where we want to go,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “There are going to be games where we hit more doubles and homers and score that way as well because we have the personnel to do that. At the moment, that hasn’t been the case. So you have to do what we did. This is one of the ways and probably one of the most common ways we’ll see more wins.”

The Cardinals won two of three from the defending National League champs despite being outscored by them and mustering so few challenges in the first half of games.

On Monday, Arizona retired the first 12 Cardinals batters and strolled into the fifth perfect only to lose on the last pitch of the ballgame when Nolan Gorman, a left-handed hitter against a lefty pitcher, ended his 0-for-18 slump with a two-run homer. On Tuesday, Arizona romped, winning by 13. On Wednesday, Montgomery had the Cardinals scoreless through five, had allowed only one of his former teammates as far as second base and showed no hints of homecoming compassion.

In the first five innings of the three games, the Cardinals scored once against Arizona, on a solo homer.

Montgomery's control of the game shifted in the sixth when Brendan Donovan roped a single up the middle and Willson Contreras followed with a double on a breaking ball. What had been another ho-hum, dimmer-switch day for the offense had its flicker.

Nolan Arenado switched on the opportunity.

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