BALTIMORE — Back into the lineup after chasing a baseball into the seats, Nolan Arenado opted this time to just hit one out to them.

Arenado’s 400-foot home run off the Bird Bath at Oriole Park shattered a tie game and completed the Cardinals’ comeback — but not their scoring. Teammates Nolan Gorman and Jordan Walker followed immediately with back-to-back triples to race the Cardinals to a 7-4 victory Tuesday night against the Orioles at Camden Yards.

Out Monday because of the soreness from diving into the seats Sunday for a crucial, ninth-inning out, Arenado returned Tuesday.

His evening was laced with missed chances — a popup with the bases loaded in the first, a diving catch just out of reach in foul territory — until the eighth inning found him with one out and Orioles right-handed reliever Bryan Baker in. Arenado jumped the first pitch he saw from Baker and lofted the sinker out toward and then out beyond left field. Arenado’s sixth homer of the season mixed with hits galore from teammates for a lead Ryan Helsley cemented.

The Cardinals closer appeared in the ninth for the third time in five days and collected his 11th save of the season.

Arenado’s homer ignited an inning that included Gorman and Walker tagging triples off the outfield wall and beyond the attempted catches of Orioles outfielders. Walker’s triple left his bat at 108 mph as he drove home Gorman. Walker scored on Masyn Winn’s second RBI in as many innings — the first of which tied the game 4-4.

Andre Pallante pitched most of his 5 2/3 innings with a lead but misplaced it on one swing. Tomoyuki Sugano allowed three runs early, but he found his footing in the middle innings to leave with the lead after his 5 1/3 innings.

Pallante retires one Ryan, not the other

Within the span of two pitches to two Orioles named Ryan, Pallante experienced a hairpin turn from euphoria to agony.

Baltimore benefited from a walk and a balk to get two runners in scoring position against Pallante in his fifth inning. The same Ryan Mountcastle who had already doubled twice off the Cardinals right-hander came to the plate — but no one from the dugout came to the mound. Catcher Ivan Herrera visited Pallante with a few teammates, and it was clear that Pallante would get that third look at the player already 2 for 2 against him.

Pallante got ahead and then put Mountcastle away.

He froze the Orioles cleanup hitter with a 94.3-mph sinker.

Pallante’s next pitch torched the lead.

Against Ryan O’Hearn, the second back-to-back Ryans in Baltimore’s lineup, Pallante fired a 94-mph first-pitch fastball and then spun to watch it land in the distant right-center seats for a three-run, script-flipping homer. O’Hearn’s ninth homer of the season turned the Cardinals’ two-run lead into a one-run deficit.

Pallante allowed four runs in his 5 2/3 innings, and the three of them that were earned all came on that swing with former teammate Dylan Carlson on deck. Pallante struck out seven, but he complicated his evening by adding three walks to Baltimore’s six hits.

When the Orioles lineup came around for a fourth chance at the Cardinals right-hander, Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol pivoted to lefty Steven Matz (3-1). He retired Jackson Holliday with a runner on base to save Pallante from another run and preface the Cardinals’ game-tying, seventh-inning rally.

Where there’s a Winn, there’s a tie

Before the cloudburst of runs in the eighth inning, the Cardinals leveled the game, 4-4, in the top of the seventh inning. Lars Nootbaar got involved with his third hit of the game, and that pushed Victor Scott II to third after a leadoff walk. Orioles reliever Keegan Akin entered for the lefty-on-lefty matchup against those two Cardinals, and when he did not retire either of them, that forced him to face Winn — a potential flaw in the assignment.

Akin did not get an out in his appearance.

Although hitting .140 against lefties this season, Winn has often said how much he enjoys hitting against lefties and how well he sees them. Akin’s appearance played into those splits, but Winn adjusted them with a single to left field that easily scored Scott and knotted the game.

A decision and the rally that wasn’t

Alec Burleson led off the sixth inning with a double that contributed to chasing starter Sugano from the game and set up an intriguing decision for Marmol.

With one out and Burleson on third, all the Cardinals needed was a ball to the outfield from Gorman — or even a ball in play, perhaps — to tie the game.

Baltimore countered with lefty Gregory Soto.

Gorman’s at-bats against lefties this season have been limited by design, and in them, he’s gone 2 for 12 (.167) with three strikeouts and two walks. But the Cardinals stuck with Gorman against Soto. Without access for the media to ask about the choice during the game, some possible reasons would be limited options off the bench. Right-handed hitters Jose Barrero, Pedro Pages and Yohel Pozo would be three, but the latter two would mean losing the DH or playing a catcher at second base (again). Another reason would be the preferred matchup of Gorman against the relievers the Orioles had lurking in later innings.

That reasoning proved most likely when, in the eighth inning, Gorman tripled off a right-handed reliever and then Barrero came into the game as a pinch runner.

The choice in the sixth meant Gorman got the at-bat against Soto and even got ahead 2-0. The lefty left Gorman unsettled from there and struck him out for the key second out without the runner advancing.

Soto struck out Walker to end the inning and the threat.

Cardinals strike early

Searching for the same spark that led to the Cardinals’ run earlier this month, Nootbaar opened Tuesday’s game in a funk that stretched nearly 20 at-bats and included three strikeouts Monday in his 0-for-4 afternoon. It ended with a single.

Nootbaar reached base to lead off a game for the first time since May 19, and it wasn’t long after his single that he scored for a 1-0 lead.

A day after getting only four hits total against Charlie Morton and his Orioles pals, the Cardinals got four singles from their first five batters Tuesday. Willson Contreras drove a pitch up the middle to score Nootbaar, and the inning could have blossomed into much more if not for Sugano quelling the rally with a popup from Arenado.

The second inning found Nootbaar with a chance to inflame it, not spark it.

Nootbaar drilled a two-run homer to increase the Cardinals lead to 3-0, and that’s where it would stay for several innings until a pair of misplays around first base allowed the Orioles to score their first run.

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