ST. LOUIS -- Sitting with his thoughts the past several nights while trying to figure out how to summon effectiveness out of his right arm a few more times before retirement, Cardinals cornerstone Adam Wainwright put himself through hours of self-reflection and evaluation.

As he thought so often about one of the worst stretches of his baseball career -- one in which he had allowed more earned runs (15) than recorded outs (12) in his previous two starts before Thursday -- Wainwright impressed upon himself the need to again pitch with a controlled rage burning deep inside of himself while on the mound.

“I’ve always pitched with a chip on my shoulder and this quiet kind of rage where I’m almost going to run through the brick wall without actually doing it,” Wainwright said following the Cardinals’ 4-2 loss to the Mets at Busch Stadium on Thursday night. “I need to be right on the verge of being angry without being angry because that makes me focus more. Part of the self-evaluation was, what did I do good and what did I not do good? There were some things where I had to say, ‘I’ve lost that edge. I’m not mentally in the same place that I’ve been for 18 years, that’s not acceptable, and I’m not going to pitch like that anymore.’

“I really worked hard at it, and I got that [edge] back. I looked at my numbers, and that’s just not who I am, and that’s not who I want to be. I can pitch left-handed better than that. You just have to look in the mirror every now and then and go, ‘Is that who you are? No, that’s not who you are? Well, then freaking stop pitching like that.’”

Wainwright stopped pitching like he did in his previous two outings, when he surrendered 15 earned runs over four-plus innings in lopsided losses to the Rockies and Royals. Despite allowing three earned runs on four hits and three walks over six innings and making significant improvement, it still wasn’t good enough for the 41-year-old pitcher to notch win No. 199 of his career.

Wainwright, who announced last fall that he would retire at the end of the 2023 season, hasn’t won since beating the Mets on June 17. He has had eight tries to nab win No. 199, but he’s often been hit hard. Thursday’s performance was an about-face for Wainwright and one that convinced the Cardinals that he deserves to remain in the rotation. Wainwright took the mound on Thursday knowing that he was likely pitching for his future as a starter for a Cardinals franchise he’s known for 18 seasons.

“I’m always pitching for my life, always trying to prove something and always trying to make the team,” Wainwright said with conviction. “My mindset today was to control what I could control. What I could control was making the next pitch, getting in good counts and putting put-away pitches in the right spots. I can’t do anything about what’s already happened. I’d love to go back and change [previous outings], but I can’t do it. So, there’s no reason for me to think about that stuff while I’m trying to make a pitch.”

Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol, who said earlier in the week that the club might have to remove Wainwright from the rotation if Thursday went poorly, said following the loss to the Mets that the veteran pitcher had earned another shot at starting. Other than Pete Alonso’s two-run homer on a well-located pitch and a two-out double by Francisco Lindor, Wainwright was in control for much of his six innings on Thursday.

“You don’t pitch for two decades without mental toughness,” Marmol said of Wainwright, who is hoping to join Hall of Famers Bob Gibson (251 wins) and Jesse Haines (210 wins) as the only Cardinals with at least 200 career victories. “This league will eat you alive, and fans will eat you alive. That’s just the reality of a high-stakes environment where you have to produce. You don’t make it as long as Waino has without facing some adversity and overcoming it. So, it speaks to the career that he’s had.”

In hopes of saving his best stuff for the game, Wainwright nixed his usual between-starts bullpen session. Instead of that throwing session, Wainwright focused on his breathing, watching his mechanics in the mirror and plenty of self-reflection. On this night, Wainwright said he knew he’d pitch better with his improved mechanics and mindset on the mound.

“I felt balanced and over the rubber and in a power position, probably for the first time all season,” he said. “Walking from the bullpen mound to the dugout, and I looked at [pitching coach] Dusty [Blake] and catcher [Andrew Knizner], and I said, ‘I don’t have to do anything different than that. That’s good enough.’ I just had to stay within myself and make pitches.”