ST. LOUIS – After Nolan Arenado won the NL’s Player of the Month Award for April and Paul Goldschmidt made a compelling case for the May award with a month for the ages, the Cardinals are hopeful that June will yield two All-Star infielders thriving at a high level simultaneously.

On Wednesday, the first day of June, the two corner infielders and franchise cornerstones took a big step in the direction of that goal. If Arenado and Goldschmidt start humming, Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said slyly, “it’ll be fun to watch.”

Arenado, who hit .375 in April before slumping to .196 in May, opened June with three hits, including his 10th home run, and added three RBIs. Meanwhile, Goldschmidt carried his torrid May into June with some stellar baserunning, a single and two walks to push his on-base streak to a career-best 37 games and his hit streak to 23 games. Add it together and the fingerprints of Arenado and Goldschmidt were all over the Cardinals' 5-2 win to sweep the Padres.

“I hope it happens, but I feel like the last two years it hasn’t,” Arenado said. “Whenever I’m playing well, he’s not swinging it; and when he is, I’m not. Today, it was cool to just get back-to-back hits because I feel like we never do. So that was good.”

As they head to Chicago for a five-game series over the next four days, the Cardinals are understandably happy to see Arenado shed an extended stretch where he struggled to make solid contact. After Arenado hit five home runs and had 17 RBIs in April, it was jarring to the organization to see him have 15 games -- including five in a row from May 24-30 -- without a hit. His May batting average (.196) was worse than his previous low for a full month (.212 last August).

“I beat myself up a little and I got unlucky at times, and that’s how it goes,” said Arenado, who ended an 0-for-17 skid on Tuesday with a bloop single off Blake Snell. “You line out and then have a bad at-bat and it adds up. I just want to contribute, and thank God these guys picked me up. It was a tough month, but we’ve got a lot of season left.”

Unsurprisingly, the Cardinals' worst offensive stretch coincided with Arenado’s slide at the start of May. The impact of Arenado’s struggles were softened by rookie infusions from Juan Yepez (.278, four HRs and eight RBIs in 25 May games) and Nolan Gorman (.387, two HRs and seven RBIs in 10 May games) and some otherworldly production from Goldschmidt. The mild-mannered slugger set a new Cardinals record for extra-base hits in May with 23 -- passing luminaries such as Stan Musial and Albert Pujols -- while hitting .404 and slugging .817.

Other than Pujols, Arenado is the only other player in the St. Louis clubhouse who knows what it feels like to go on the kind of tear that Goldschmidt has been on.

“It’s crazy, and the craziest thing is who it’s been against, because we’re facing good arms with the Brewers and Padres,” Arenado said. “He’s in a zone where I don’t know that I’ve ever been in one like that before.”

On Wednesday, when Padres pitcher Yu Darvish was determined to pitch around Goldschmidt and make the scuffling Arenado beat him, the former walked in his first two at-bats. After grounding into a double play in his first at-bat, Arenado drilled a line drive to left field and looked on as Goldschmidt deftly went from first to third. A batter later, Goldschmidt scored on a sacrifice fly by Yepez.

Two innings later, Goldschmidt got his arms extended and hit a 96 mph fastball from Darvish for the single that extended the longest hit streak of his career. Two pitches later, Arenado squared up a Darvish fastball for his 30th career home run against the Padres. Arenado’s ability to go to right field for hits and get back to pulling the ball for power has the Cardinals dreaming of what life might be like with him and Goldschmidt bashing balls at the same time.

“We’ve got two extremely good players right behind each other,” Marmol said, “so it’s a matter of time before they both get going.”