WASHINGTON – As if he was warning other rival teams in the National League, Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol offered a rather candid remark recently when discussing the resurgence of superstar third baseman Nolan Arenado.

“Don’t let Arenado get hot,” Marmol said in the middle of a breakout series for the eight-time MLB All-Star who has been in search of a consistent swing most of the season.

Having already delivered six hits in the first two games of the four-game series, Arenado recorded two more hits and two RBIs on Sunday, and teammates Willson Contreras and Nolan Gorman combined to knock in five runs as the Cardinals beat Washington 8-3 at Nationals Park.

Largely ineffective this season against left-handed pitching, the Cardinals knocked Nats lefty DJ Herz out after 4 1/3 innings and pounded out 13 hits. Arenado, who had the 20th four-hit game of his career on Friday, improved to 8-for-14 in the series with a second straight two-hit day.

Contreras, who hit a clutch ninth-inning home run on Friday to set the stage for an extra-innings win, singled in a run in the fifth and launched a line-drive, two-run home run in the seventh inning. Gorman, who was left out of Friday’s starting lineup so that he could work on cutting down his tendency of pulling off pitches, had two more hits and two RBIs on Sunday. Gorman, who came into Friday hitting .189, is 7-for-11 in the series, which wraps up with a day game on Monday. His opposite-field single in the fourth inning broke a 2-2 tie.

The Cardinals have the National League’s best record since May 12 at 32-18. Over the past month, they have lost consecutive games just once. They rebounded from Saturday’s unsightly 14-6 defeat with their 11th victory on the heels of their last 12 losses.

Kyle Gibson (7-3) breezed through five innings before encountering trouble in the sixth inning. Incredibly, he got 18 swings and misses from the Nationals while racking up eight strikeouts. Gibson scattered nine hits over five-plus innings while limiting the Nats to just three runs.