ST. LOUIS — The way the Cardinals went out on their home field on Sunday felt fitting based on how this season unfolded.

Another nail-biter in a season defined by close games and narrow margins. The pitching performance combined a starter in Andre Pallante who pitched to his strengths and relied on his defense and a bullpen that’s become accustomed to operating with no safety net. The offense was, well, beg barrow and steal runs by any means necessary.

Pallante and the bullpen duo of Andrew Kittredge and All-Star closer Ryan Helsley held the Cleveland Guardians to two hits, while the Cardinals scored a pair of runs by alert base running from rookie shortstop Masyn Winn and outfielder Lars Nootbaar that took advantage of their opponents' mistakes in a 2-1 win in front of an announced crowd of 39,100 at Busch Stadium. It marked the 50th one-run game of the season for the Cardinals.

“Just hustle, not giving in,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said of the way his club scored. “You look at — we’re out of playoff contention. They’re still playing the game hard. That’s what you want to see. They’re playing for pride as far as just finishing strong. For us to score the way we did today, I mean not a whole lot offense. But there’s some plays where it’s just a matter of getting after it and hustling, and it leads to two runs.”

The Cardinals (79-77) earned a win in their final home game, and they also won their final home series of the season.

The Cardinals’ home attendance fell below 3 million this season. They compiled a season total of 2,869,783 in 80 home games (they lost a home game to play at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala.).

Sunday’s win over the Guardians (90-67) marked the 46th time this season the Cardinals scored two runs or fewer in a game. They entered the day scoring an average of 4.08 runs per game (MLB average is 4.41), the 25th-ranked scoring offense out of 30 MLB teams.

In the clubhouse after the game, the club’s highest-profile veteran hitters Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado and Willson Contreras (currently on the injured list) addressed the uncertainty heading into what increasingly seems like an offseason that will be characterized by change.

Contreras, the club’s starting catcher who is on the IL for the second time this season because of a broken bone, had been the club’s best offensive player when healthy this season.

Contreras batted .262 with a .380 on-base percentage and a .468 slugging percentage to go with 15 home runs despite playing in just 84 games. Up until last weekend, his 45 walks were leading the team.

When asked by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the club's offensive performance this season, Contreras offered a blunt assessment. He pointed to the club’s statistics as an indication of a failure to execute, inconsistency from the top of the lineup to the bottom and trying to do too much in big spots. He included himself in that assessment.

“There’s some areas that need to be addressed,” he said. “I don’t know if the front office is going to, but like I said, we didn’t come as an offense at all during the whole year. There’s a lot of holes throughout the lineup from one to nine, and the only thing we can control is show up next year and keep working.

“As an organization, I think the Cardinals are one of the biggest organizations in baseball. ... If I was the front office, I’d be hungry to own this division. But we haven’t owned this division in the last two years.”

The Cardinals finish the season at Colorado and San Francisco.

In the clubhouse, there also were clear acknowledgements that mainstays Goldschmidt and Arenado might have played their last home game together. Goldschmidt is set to become a free agent this winter.

“It’s definitely a possibility, but it’s also a possibility that it’s not,” Goldschmidt said of potentially having played his last home game for the Cardinals. “For me, I was just trying to go out there and play well. I didn’t do that, but fortunately, the guys did their job and we got the win.”

Goldschmidt went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts. The 2022 NL MVP, Goldschmidt saw his production drop for a second consecutive season. He has a career batting average of .289 with a .382 on-base percentage and a .510 slugging percentage. This season, he has slashed.243/.302/.407 with 21 home runs in 149 games. He’s seen improvement in his last 30 games in the form of a .300/.353/.473 slash line.

“If you were going to ask me what happened this year, I think I just created some bad habits that I hadn’t really done in my past years,” Goldschmidt said.

The 37-year-old remained steadfast that he can still play at a high level.

“For me, whether it was playing well this last few weeks or month going into the offseason, I still felt like I had the ability to perform," Goldschmidt said. "Now, you’ve got to go out there and prove that you’re going to do it. That’s something, at least, I’ve been able to do a little bit better job of this last month. I’ll definitely be ready to go and believe I can play well going forward, but belief doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to happen."

In Goldschmidt’s MVP season on 2022, Arenado finished third in the voting. Those two, also teammates for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic, have been close.

“I love Paulie,” Arenado said. “He’s been a great teammate, a great friend, one of my best friends. He doesn’t like to be talked about and he doesn’t want attention, but he deserves his recognition. I don’t know if he’s going to come back next year, but what a player he’s been here. I still think he’s got a lot of great ball in him wherever he goes. It’s been an honor to play with him.”

Arenado has also seen his offensive power production drop this season from his career slash line of .285/.341/.516 with an average of more than 30 home runs per season to a slash line of .270/.342/.394 with 16 home runs this season.

While Arenado has continued to place the responsibility for the team’s offensive struggles on his own shoulders, he seemed ready to welcome additions aimed at bolstering the club’s offense.

“We’re going to probably need some help; the numbers are saying it,” Arenado said. “I know I keep pointing back to myself, and I’ve got to play better. I think I could help this team more, but in our ballpark you don’t necessarily get rewarded for hitting the ball good. That’s always tough. When we have a young team like we do, it’s not easy.

"So I think we’re all open to a little help. That would be great. I don’t know if that’s going to happen. If it doesn’t, it is what it is. We’ve just got to continue to find ways to get better.”

Sunday, the Cardinals’ first run came in the sixth inning. Winn lined a single to right field for the Cardinals’ third hit of the game to start the inning. However, he remained stranded on first base with two outs with Arenado at the plate.

With a 3-2 count, Winn was running on the pitch. Arenado hit a fly-ball to right field that caused Guardians second baseman Daniel Scheeman and right fielder Jhonkensy Noel, who’d taken several circuitous routes in the outfield to fly-balls earlier in the game, converged on the ball in shallow right field. With Scheeman backpedaling and Noel pulling up, they allowed the ball to drop, and Winn raced home.

The Cardinals scored their second run in the seventh inning without a hit. Nootbaar reached with one out after he took a pitch off the ribs. With two outs, Pedro Pages walked and put runners on first base and second base.

Winn drew a two-out walk, but the final pitch of that at-bat — a fastball from reliever Andrew Walters — hit the dirt, kicked all the way to the back wall behind home plate and then caromed through foul territory toward the home dugout.

Nootbaar already was headed to third on the pitch with a full count and two outs. He alertly rounded third and dashed for home as the ball skipped away from Guardians catcher Austin Hedges. Nootbaar slid into the plate with Walters covering, but Hedges didn’t even make a throw.

Pallante (8-8) did not allow a hit through the first five innings. He held the Guardians to one run on one hit and two walks through seven innings. He struck out four.

Kittredge pitched a scoreless eighth inning for his 36th hold of the season — the team single-season record.

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