ST. LOUIS – A fiery competitor who admittedly doesn’t always handle failure as well as he’d like, Cardinals star third baseman Nolan Arenado made up his mind a few weeks back that he would do everything in his power to keep his team in the race for a Wild Card slot and still be a good teammate if St. Louis fell out of it.

For one more night, at least, Arenado hasn’t had to worry about the doom scenario while seemingly trying to will the Cardinals back into the hunt for a playoff spot with more late-game heroics.

A week after hitting a walk-off grand slam to key a win over the Brewers, Arenado drilled a ball up the middle to give the Cardinals a much-needed 4-3 victory over the Padres at Busch Stadium. The game-winner came on a night when Arenado twice ranged to his left and made stellar defensive plays for a Cardinals club that came into Wednesday seven games back of the final National League Wild Card slot.

“I didn’t have the greatest at-bats today, and [Padres closer Robert] Suarez has a great arm, so I just tried to shorten up, barrel it and not try to do too much,” Arenado said. “Our young guys [Masyn Winn and Victor Scott II] had great at-bats, and it’s about time I picked them up.”