Adam Wainwright pitched 6 1/3 strong innings and Paul DeJong drove in a pair of runs to boost the visiting St. Louis Cardinals to a 4-2 victory against the Chicago Cubs on Saturday in the first game of a doubleheader.

Wainwright scattered two runs on six hits while striking out six and walking one.

Cubs center fielder Ian Happ smacked two solo home runs against the veteran right-hander, who only allowed four singles otherwise. The last of those, to Nico Hoerner with one out in the seventh, chased Wainwright from the contest as he fell two outs short of his second successive complete game.

Giovanny Gallegos pitched around a two-out error to earn his third save as St. Louis reached .500 for a major league-leading 11th time this season.

Happ, who missed Friday's series opener against St. Louis while recovering from an injury to his right eye, has a team-best 12 home runs.

The Cubs failed to capitalize on a would-be, double-play grounder with one out and the bases loaded that would have allowed them to escape the second inning unscathed.

Kolten Wong, who had two hits, scored on DeJong's run-scoring forceout, and Matt Carpenter drew his seventh career bases-loaded walk two batters later to put the Cardinals ahead 2-1.

Struggles with accuracy spelled an abbreviated outing for Chicago right-hander Adbert Alzolay, who yielded two runs on two hits in 2 2/3 innings with five walks and four strikeouts to fall to 0-1.

St. Louis added two more runs in the fourth after Lane Thomas led off the inning with a double. Tommy Edman hit an RBI sacrifice fly before DeJong added a run-scoring single.

Wainwright (4-0) yielded a leadoff home run to Happ on the second pitch of the Cubs' first inning but retired the next three batters after that. He eluded additional damage in the second, pitching out of a bases-load, no-outs jam by striking out Steven Souza Jr., inducing Hoerner on a lineout and getting Happ to ground into a forceout.

The Cardinals went 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position while stranding eight. The Cubs stranded seven runners and batted 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position.

--Field Level Media