ST. LOUIS — And it was supposed to be his day off.

Nolan Arenado put on his cleats, grabbed a bat, and came out of the dugout and into one of the most entertaining and captivating games of the season. He was just in time to deliver a walk-off RBI double in the ninth inning and send the Cardinals to a 2-1 victory against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday. The Dodgers jammed the infield with players, so when Arenado lofted a fly ball to left, there was no fielder in the vicinity to catch his 13th career walk-off.

At the end of a brilliant game that was scoreless until the eighth inning and tied on a wild pitch in the top of the ninth, Nolan Gorman put the winning rally in motion with a double on the first pitch of the bottom of the ninth.

Pinch runner Jose Barrero reached third on a bunt-turned-error.

Into the game came Arenado to pinch hit for Victor Scott II. The plan had been to give their Gold Glove-winning third baseman a break after his busy, three-hit night Friday. But the most riveting win yet of the season for the Cardinals asked a bit of everything from anyone available — and Arenado provided the swing to decide it.

The Cardinals can sweep the defending World Series champions with a win Sunday as rookie Michael McGreevy starts opposite familiar foe Clayton Kershaw.

Starters Erick Fedde and Yoshinobu Yamamoto exchanged zeroes through the first six innings in a classic duel — and each had to weave through traffic to do so. Fedde created some of his own trouble with four walks in 5 1/3 scoreless, and Yamamoto escaped trouble with several of his nine strikeouts in six scoreless innings. The run that broke the tie came in the eighth inning as time seemed to stop for the Dodgers’ defense and Masyn Winn kept running.

Foiled in his attempt to sneak home earlier in the game, Winn dashed around third base in the eighth inning and shattered a tense scoreless tie with his ability to outrace a play that never left the infield for the game’s first run.

With two on and two out and yet another opportunity potentially fizzling on the Cardinals, Alec Burleson tagged a ball back at Dodgers’ reliever Ben Casparius. Winn had singled earlier in the inning, and he got to second on Brendan Donovan’s base hit. Burleson’s bolt caromed off Casparius and toward third base. When the reliever turned his back to Winn and attempted to get the third out at first, Winn just kept on going.

First baseman Freddie Freeman had to chase the throw, regain his footing, and that pause gave Winn time to slide home ahead of the throw.

The savvy dash — the latest small ball from these go-go Cardinals — gave closer Ryan Helsley a 1-0 lead to secure in the ninth. It slipped away on a wild pitch.

Helsley was able to strike out Freeman with two other MVPs at the corners, but when that strike squirted past catcher Pedro Pages, Shohei Ohtani scored to knot the game, 1-1. Helsley held from there after his second blow save in four games to get the game, still tied, into the ninth.

Matz dodges liner and damage

The liner off Mookie Betts’ bat appeared headed for Steven Matz’s face if not for the lefty getting his arm up in time to block it.

That was only one of Matz’s saves that won’t appear in the box score.

The Cardinals opted to promote rookie McGreevy to the majors for a start Sunday in large part because the young right-hander has earned a turn in the majors, but in no small part because of the job Matz has done in relief. With Matz as a preferred late-inning matchup for the Dodgers, the Cardinals wanted him available for several games, not just to start one of them. In the sixth inning Saturday, he appeared in his second game in as many days and held tight to the situation he inherited.

Matz took over for Fedde with one out and two on, and he struck out a pinch hitter and retired two batters to keep the scoreless tie going through the top of the sixth.

In the seventh, Matz stayed in to face the top of the Dodgers’ order. He got Ohtani to pop up, but Betts’ liner seemed to quake the inning. It was the second infield single Matz allowed in the inning, and it meant he had to face Freeman with two on and one out. Oh, and he had just been visited on the mound to see if there was damage to his arm by the liner.

Matz stayed in.

It took him four pitches to get Freeman to bounce into a double play.

Matz pitched a scoreless ninth to complete Friday’s shutout, and with Freeman’s groundout Matz completed 1 2/3 scoreless to keep Saturday’s game scoreless.

Fedde sidesteps walks, paves zeroes

After his win Friday night and 6 1/3 innings, Cardinals starter Sonny Gray offered a roadmap for weaving through one of the best lineups in the majors — and also a warning.

“They’re just no breaks,” Gray said. “There are no breaks in the lineup. That doesn’t mean you can’t compete with them. It’s just not a lineup where you can get overly predictable. Every hitter has holes and you want to exploit those holes that they have. But you also have to mix and you have to get them in between and you have to pitch. They’re just too good to just do the same thing over and over and over.”

What Gray did by mixing several genres of pitches, Fedde achieved by varying fastballs.

Fedde mixed in four walks to both complicate his outing and also show how he tried to lure the Dodgers out of the zone for meek contact. Fedde leaned into his sinker and a cutter, and adjusted when, how, and where he used both. When the Dodgers loaded the bases in the third inning, Fedde threw three consecutive sinkers to Will Smith before getting a fly out on a full-count cutter. In the fifth inning, the top of LA’s lineup arrived with a runner on base and no outs.

LA’s answer to the MV3 loomed.

But Fedde picked through them in the same way he got through 5 1/3 scoreless innings. Ohtani flew out on a 91.1-mph cutter. Betts had an excuse-me, check-swing grounder to first on a 81.5-mph sweeper, and then it was back to the cutter to get a groundout from Freeman.

Cards run, swing out of early chances

Before Yamamoto got into a groove in the middle innings and retired them swiftly — on 10 pitches in the third inning, or 11 in the fourth, as an example — the Cardinals had chances in the first innings to dent Yamamoto’s ERA, however slightly.

He slipped free of trouble both times — with help from the Cardinals.

In the first inning, a single, a walk, and a groundout put runners at the corners with Burleson at the plate. At first, Willson Contreras broke for second before Yamamoto started his delivery. Contreras wanted to draw attention so that teammate Winn, at third base, could attempt to steal a run by heading home. The idea was to draw the Dodgers into a misstep defensively, and they did not. The Dodgers quickly trapped Winn between home and third. There was a brief moment where Winn appeared to slip free of the pickle and dive back into third, but the umpire ruled him out of the base line.

Attempts by manager Oliver Marmol to walk the basepath, show Winn’s footprints in the dirt, and how close they were to the baseline did not, as expected, convince the umpire to reconsider.

In the bottom of the second, the bottom of the Cardinals order turned two singles and a hit batter into the bases loaded against Yamamoto.

All of that happened with two outs to bring the top of the order back around.

Leadoff hitter Lars Nootbaar faced his friend, his fellow Wasserman agency client, and Team Japan teammate Yamamoto with the opportunity to blow the game open early. On Friday afternoon, Nootbaar spoke with reporters about his Team Japan teammates and was asked for his opinion on Yamamoto’s best pitch.

“Maybe the fastball,” Nootbaar said.

He then quickly added.

“Or the curveball or the splitter or the slider,” the Cardinals outfielder said.

He might suggest the splitter if asked Saturday.

With the bases loaded, Yamamoto fell behind with the four-seam fastball and then challenged Nootbaar with three consecutive split-finger fastballs. Nootbaar swung over all three, missing on a 90.4-mph splitter to end his at-bat, end the inning, and give him two strikeouts in his first two at-bats against Yamamoto.

Nootbaar singled off Yamamoto in the fifth inning to give the middle of the order a look with a runner in scoring position.

It went as well as the others.

When Yamamoto left the game after the sixth inning, he had held the Cardinals 0 for 4 with runners in scoring position. Not one of those at-bats resulted in a ball out of the infield.

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