ST. LOUIS — True to how the visit from the Miami Marlins had through two games, the St. Louis Cardinals spent most of Sunday’s game with the slimmest margin possible to still pull off a win.

This time, the scarce offense was enough.

Riley O’Brien inherited a one-run lead and zipped through the ninth inning to secure his 20th save of the season and the Cardinals’ 2-1 victory at a sweltering Busch Stadium. The win salvaged a series against the Marlins that featured a grand total of three runs for the Cardinals in 28 innings of coming to the plate.

Both of the Cardinals’ runs Sunday came on the same swing.

Rarely used over the previous two weeks, Bryan Torres started his second consecutive game and pulled a two-run homer into the right-field seats. Torres’ homer in the second inning was all Cardinals pitchers had to work with. Kyle Leahy walked the farthest on that tightrope, holding the Marlins to two hits through five innings. The bullpen pitched the final four innings — and spent the entire time one swing away from a tie game.

O’Brien pitched a perfect ninth.

He did not have any margin for error in part because of a nearly disastrous moment in the bottom of the eighth. The Cardinals’ base runner at third base, Nathan Church, was picked off for the second out of the inning. The Cardinals’ chance to increase O’Brien’s cushion by a run evaporated due to the lapse. O’Brien made sure it wasn’t costly for the Cardinals.

The Cardinals reached the midpoint of the regular season with a 43-38 record. Their hold on the National League’s first wild-card berth slipped in the past week due to seven losses in nine games, but they regained a grip with the one victory against Miami, a challenger for a wild-card berth.

A pair of giveaways — soccer jerseys for adults, soccer balls for kids — contributed to one of the largest crowds since school let out. The Cardinals announced a tickets-sold crowd of 37,779 for the game, up 12,000 from Saturday’s game and 10,000 more than what the Cardinals averaged in their first 40 home games of the season.

At the halfway point of the regular season, the Cardinals rank 17th in attendance.

After Torres’ homer, Marlins starter Tyler Phillips faced the minimum to get the next 15 outs and carry the one-run game into the seventh inning.

Phillips sped through the Cardinals lineup the second time he faced them and did not allow a base runner at all from the third through the sixth inning.

JJ Wetherholt snapped Phillips’ streak with a leadoff single in the sixth.

A quick double play, and Phillips was back on track.

Few at-bats but big blast

In the Cardinals’ homestand before this — an island of a stay at Busch featuring only games against San Diego — Torres didn’t even take an at-bat. The versatile fielder didn’t appear off the bench, didn’t snag an inning in the field at any of the four or five positions he can play.

In the nine days before Sunday, Torres had appeared in three games total and taken two at-bats. Even the first game he started at third base resulted in one at-bat before he was lifted for a pinch hitter to gain a matchup edge for the Cardinals against a reliever.

Despite the limited playing time, Torres came through with what’s been missing for the Cardinals throughout this homestand.

He delivered the big hit.

Shut out on Friday and held to a single run through the first 19 innings of the series against Miami, the Cardinals got a leadoff single from Masyn Winn to start the second inning Sunday.

The Marlins spent the series confounding the Cardinals with breaking balls, and they had thrown more than 100 sliders or sweepers in the series by the time Sunday reached Torres for his first at-bat. Winn was on second when Torres connected for a deep fly ball that cleared the right-field fence. Torres’ third homer of the season was also his first against a team other than the Cincinnati Reds.

And it was the Cardinals’ second homer of a power-outage homestand.

It also produced the only runs that O’Brien had to defend in the ninth.

Leahy builds off career high

In his previous start of the homestand, Leahy collected an out in the seventh inning for the first time as a starter. He did not allow a run in 6 1/3 innings against Arizona, and it was only because of the Cardinals’ wilting offense that he received a no-decision for what, by several measures, was his finest start of the season.

His summer has very much been a work in progress, with all of the chutes and ladders of a pitcher learning new challenges on the job.

Leahy has been candid about how’s he had to explore and experiment everything about his preparation as a starter, from what he does in the days between starts to his diet on the day of his start and what he eats during the start. He’s kept a meticulous journal of things that have worked and suggestions that teammates have made to help. For him, one of the challenges — and thus a standout goal — has been to maintain his strength and stuff later into starts.

He did that against the Diamondbacks.

And he had the look of doing that Sunday against Miami.

The heat contributed to a shorter start, and a rising pitch count appeared to as well.

Leahy pitched around two walks in the first inning to keep the Marlins from taking a swift lead. By the end of the second, Leahy had walked three batters, but by quickly establishing his array of pitches, he was able to limit what the Marlins did with the base runners. Not one of the batters Leahy walked got past first base safely, and two were stranded there at the end of an inning.

Leahy struck out two in the third inning, including All-Star Kyle Stowers, and he breezed through the middle of the Marlins order the second time he faced it.

He had not allowed a hit through the first four innings.

A pair of doubles in the fifth produced the lone run against Leahy. Owen Caissie led off the fifth with a double, and Graham Pauley followed with a rule-book double to score Caissie. The Cardinals halted the Marlins rally there.

With some help from the defense and an infield-in pinch to keep Pauley at third, Leahy got two outs without another runner scoring.

He struck out Otto Lopez with a sweeper to end the inning.

That also was the end of his game.

Leahy allowed one run on two hits — the two doubles — and struck out five to help minimize whatever trouble the three walks could have caused. In his two starts on the homestand, Leahy allowed a run and a total of five hits in 11 1/3 innings.

Go-go to JoJo

With an off-day Monday in Atlanta and rising temperatures Sunday at Busch, the Cardinals could be aggressive with the use of the bullpen to hold a slim lead.

JoJo Romero handled the heavy lifting to get the lead to the late innings.

The National League leader in holds with 18 coming into Sunday’s game, Romero entered in the sixth inning. He has joked this season that despite being a left-handed reliever, he prepares to face more right-handed batters because of how teams counter his appearance in games. Sure enough, as soon as he entered the game, the Marlins made a switch for the fourth batter he faced to assure that three of the first four against him would bat right-handed.

He retired all of them except for switch-hitter Xavier Edwards.

Romero struck out pinch hitter Javier Sanoja to end the sixth inning and assure the one-run lead he inherited would persist at least until the bottom of that inning. The Marlins lineup set up for him to start the seventh inning as well, and he got a flyout from Pauley to complete his four-out assignment.

Right-handed relievers Ryne Stanek and George Soriano collected the next five outs to carry the one-run game through the top of the eighth. Stanek got a double play to erase the one hit he allowed, and Soriano retired all three batters he faced for a perfect eighth.

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