SAN FRANCISCO -- On Sunday, Matt Carpenter said that the Cardinals didn’t have many answers. The frustration was palpable. But the next day, against one of the game’s best starters, he’d craft a solution.

Carpenter’s two-out, two-run triple in the seventh inning sparked St. Louis’ 5-3 win over the Giants on Monday afternoon at Oracle Park, serving as the lightning rod for an offense that has struggled to find its footing.

“You hear the expression ‘The ball will find you’ when you go play defense,” said manager Mike Shildt. “Well, [Carpenter] goes in and hits and he said, ‘The ball found me.’”

The veteran’s three-bagger was all the more satisfying given that, heading into the inning, St. Louis was being no-hit. Kevin Gausman, who was named a first-time All-Star on Sunday, kept the Cardinals without a knock through 6 1/3 innings, partly due to some stellar defense.

Right fielder Jaylin Davis made a diving catch in the fifth inning to chase down Harrison Bader’s towering fly ball in shallow right field, then easily doubled up Carpenter at first base. The following frame, third baseman Wilmer Flores made a diving stop, then fired to first to rob Edmundo Sosa of the Cardinals’ first hit. Defensive gems of that quality felt like an indicator of trouble, as far as St. Louis was concerned.

The Cardinals didn’t record their first hit until one out in the seventh inning, when Nolan Arenado -- who pestered the Giants for about a decade with the Rockies and was recently named an All-Star starter for the sixth time -- lined a single into left field. Arenado’s hit induced a sea of groans that were quickly replaced by cheers as the San Francisco faithful applauded Gausman’s flirtation with history. The groans would return in short order.

Two batters later, Tommy Edman beat the shift, down in the count 0-2, with an infield single to the left side. With an exit velocity of 76.5 mph, Edman’s single was the softest hit of the game to that point, and it set the stage for Carpenter to make some noise. As Carpenter slid feet-first into third base after tripling home two runs, he popped up, looked to his dugout and emphatically pumped his fist.

Carpenter’s situational hitting set the tempo for the game’s final two frames, as the Cardinals would plate a run in the eighth and two more in the ninth. Given how well St. Louis swung the bats in the final three innings, it was easy to forget its brush with the wrong side of history.

“[Gausman] took a no-hitter into the top of the seventh, I believe it was. Was really just painting and not making any mistakes, and we found a way to scratch [out a couple of runs] against him,” Carpenter said.

Those were the kind of sequences that had generally escaped St. Louis in recent weeks.

In June, the Cardinals posted an OPS of .626, the worst in the Majors. In their recent four-game series against the Rockies at Coors Field, the Cards scored two runs in three of their four games. To scratch out runs against an elite starting pitcher -- especially one with an eye on the record books -- was more than encouraging.

Those runs in the seventh inning were more than enough for Kwang Hyun Kim, who outdueled Gausman with seven shutout innings, tying the longest outing of his career. For a brief moment, however, there was fear that Kim wouldn’t even make it past the fourth.

On a 1-0 pitch to Darin Ruf, Kim came up hobbling and was immediately met by a trainer. The moment evoked the feeling of deja vu; on Sunday, the Cardinals had to remove Carlos Martínez in the fourth inning with a bruised right thumb. Shildt said that as he went to the mound, he started thinking of how he’d game plan the rest of the afternoon.

Thankfully, Kim had only caught a spike in the dirt, and after one warmup pitch, he went back to work, and did so efficiently. In the fifth and sixth innings, Kim only needed 11 pitches to retire six hitters, a briskness that allowed him to pitch deep.

These quality outings have been the norm for St. Louis’ starters over the past couple days, but the offense’s awakening was a welcome sight. There’s more work to be done on that front, and Monday’s late-game execution provided a block on which to build.

“If we can do it consistently, we’re going to catch some people,” Carpenter said.