WAINWRIGHT’S strong day lifts Cards over D’backs.

CARDINALS 5, DIAMONDBACKS 2

ST. LOUIS — Adam Wainwright made the most of a couple of extra days of rest.

Paul Goldschmidt homered, Wainwright pitched seven scoreless innings, and the St. Louis Cardinals held on to beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 5-2 on Sunday.

Wainwright (6-7), who was scratched from Friday’s start due to back spasms, relied on a mixture of cutters, change-ups and curve balls. He allowed 4 hits, walked 1 and struck out 7 as he improved to 4-0 in day starts this season.

“There’s still some things I can do better, a few 2-0 counts that I had today that I would like to avoid to some pretty good hitters,” Wainwright said. “They had first and third a couple of times, we got out of it with a couple good pitches that we needed to make. Other than that, I’m throwing the ball like I expect to throw the ball.”

Arizona trailed 5-0 going to the ninth before Domingo Leyba and Jarrod Dyson had RBI singles against John Brebbia. The Diamondbacks had the bases loaded with two outs, but Carlos Martinez got Eduardo Escobar to hit a fly ball to center for the final out for his fifth save.

“It’s exactly the game were looking for,” Cardinals Manager Mike Shildt said. “It’s exactly the game we’ve been demonstrating. It gets punctuated with the run production, simple as that.”

Wainwright helped himself out offensively by walking and scoring to start a three-run third inning rally, and he also laid down a sacrifice bunt leading to Matt Carpenter’s sacrifice fly as the Cardinals tacked on their fifth run in the fourth.

Diamondbacks starter Zack Greinke (10-4) gave up five runs in six innings.