ST. LOUIS -- After a trio of short starts, a pair of bullpen blowups and one lopsided loss the day before, the Pirates put the ball in the hands of their best pitchers on Friday night at Busch Stadium.

Right-hander Trevor Williams stepped up to play the role of stopper, grinding through seven innings to carry a weary pitching staff. Then setup man Kyle Crick escaped a jam in the eighth inning, and closer Felipe Vazquez dominated in the ninth, sealing the Pirates’ 2-1 win over the Cardinals.

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It was a team effort, as Pittsburgh’s wins tend to be. Adam Frazier gave Williams a lead by launching a leadoff homer off Adam Wainwright in the first inning. Josh Bell made a key stop at first base in the second, and Cole Tucker turned a big double play behind Crick. Tucker, Kevin Newman and Starling Marte strung together three hits to put the Bucs back on top in the eighth.

But Williams set the tone.

“The one guy who really came out and laid it out there was Trevor,” Crick said. “He pitched fantastic.”

With their rotation missing top starters Jameson Taillon and Chris Archer, the Pirates’ bullpen has borne the brunt of the workload. Bullpen games started by Steven Brault and Nick Kingham and a short outing by Joe Musgrove forced the Pirates’ relief corps to pitch 15 innings over the previous three days.

In other words, Pittsburgh needed a performance like the one Williams put together.

“The better we can do as a starting staff of getting deeper into games, the better we’re going to be and the better our bullpen’s going to be,” Williams said. “And we’re going to consistently win more games that way.”

Williams’ night did not begin in ideal fashion, however, as he threw 30 pitches in the first inning. He escaped the jam by striking out Yadier Molina with a high, 95-mph fastball -- well above his average four-seam velocity of 91.8 mph this season -- and leaving the bases loaded.

Williams breezed through the next five innings on 57 pitches. He struck out five with only one walk on the night. He allowed nine hits, none of them for extra bases. He faced 31 hitters and threw a first-pitch strike to 25 of them. The Cardinals swung and missed on 11 of the 47 four-seam fastballs he threw.

“I think they had a couple games in a row where they walked a bunch of people, but Trevor Williams doesn’t pitch like that,” said Wainwright, who delivered a vintage seven-inning performance of his own. “He’s not going to give you a whole lot of second chances. We knew he was going to attack the zone."

The Cardinals finally rallied in the seventh on three softly hit singles. Paul DeJong’s game-tying single was a cue shot that left his bat at 58.5 mph and eluded Frazier, who couldn’t corral it in time because the Pirates’ infield was shifted away for the right-handed hitter.

“It’s tough. If we lost that game, we would hate losing it that way,” Williams said. “If we’re going to lose games, we’d rather get crushed and beaten around.”

But Williams’ teammates wouldn’t let him end the night with a no-decision. Wainwright shut the Pirates out after Frazier’s leadoff homer, but they finally got to lefty reliever Andrew Miller. Tucker and Newman poked a pair of singles, then Marte -- who had only two hits in 23 at-bats against left-handed pitchers this season -- smacked the go-ahead hit to right field.

“The guys picked me up in the eighth,” Williams said, “and we were shut-down after that.”

With a late lead, Pirates manager Clint Hurdle called on Crick to work the eighth. A leadoff walk and single put runners at first and third for Crick, who needed a strikeout or a popup from the next hitter, Dexter Fowler. He wound up striking out Fowler with a 2-2 slider at the bottom of the strike zone.

“Baseball’s a confidence battle. Whoever’s more confident usually wins,” Crick said. “I don’t give the edge to the hitter, let’s say that.”

Up came Kolten Wong, a persistent thorn in the Pirates’ side. Crick got Wong to bounce a fastball back up the middle, kept himself from trying to make a play and let his defense go to work.

Tucker was positioned perfectly on top of second base. The rookie made a pair of mistakes in the fourth inning, first letting a throw from Melky Cabrera skip by him then booting a ball similar to the one Wong hit. But Tucker scooped up Wong’s grounder, stepped on second base and fired a throw to Bell at first to complete the inning-ending double play.

“To make that play after a couple plays in [the fourth] inning, what a great growing opportunity for a young man,” Hurdle said.

It wouldn’t get any easier for Vazquez, who had to face Harrison Bader, Matt Carpenter and Paul Goldschmidt in the ninth inning. But the lefty has made everything look easy lately. Vazquez retired Bader on a hard-hit grounder, forced Carpenter to fly out then struck out Goldschmidt on three pitches to nail down his 11th save.

“That’s what you’re looking for in a closer after you get to that point,” Hurdle said.