ST LOUIS – On day one, Miguel Cairo stayed on course and managed as if he was merely filling in for Davey Martinez. On day two, he decided to veer just a bit into the wild and try something different. And then was rewarded for it.

With a couple of lineup tweaks designed both to get more right-handed hitters into the lineup against an opposing starter with reverse splits and to keep bench players more engaged, Cairo watched his Nationals cruise to an 8-2 victory over the Cardinals, his first as interim manager.

"It was good," Cairo said. "It was good for my friend Davey. This one was for him, because he's the one that put this team together and believed in these players and put the coaching staff together. So this goes to him."

That tweaked lineup, featuring Amed Rosario in the third spot and Alex Call in the sixth spot against St. Louis starter Andre Pallante, jumped out to an early lead and never looked back.

It didn’t hurt, of course, to also have MacKenzie Gore on the mound, the All-Star left-hander turning in another stellar performance to close out his breakthrough first half in style.

"It meant a lot for me," said Rosario, whose OPS vs. righties (.554) was almost 300 points worse than his OPS vs. lefties (.851), via interpreter Mauricio Ortiz. "I think it's only a matter of opportunities."

With the raw emotions of Tuesday’s series opener no longer at the forefront, Cairo and his team went back to work today in a manner that felt close to normal at last. And when he filled out his second lineup card as interim manager, he opted for a bit of an unconventional look, starting Rosario and Call over regulars Luis García Jr. and Daylen Lile.

The rationale was twofold: Pallante has unusual reverse splits, with righties sporting a .282 batting average and .801 OPS while lefties produced at a .214 and .630 clip. But beyond that, Cairo wants his bench players to see more consistent action, even if the matchups don’t always play to their favor.

"I’m going to try to put the best lineup out there. That’s my job," he said. "But I want to keep the guys on the bench, I want them to be a part of the offense. When you include everyone, it’s like … I want to make sure everyone is a part of what we’re doing, a part of the offense. Of course Pallante has been pitching good against lefties. I thought it was a good chance for me to put Rosario and Call in there, so we can keep them fresh and keep them seeing live pitching."

No matter who was in tonight’s lineup, the notion of scoring first, and scoring early, was paramount. The facts have backed it up all year long: The Nationals are 19-9 when they score in the first inning, 19-45 when they don’t. And lo and behold, they’ve now done it in each of their last three victories.

"It's the best. Scoring first is the best," first baseman Nathaniel Lowe said. "It gives us a chance to kind of settle in, and then ideally continue to score and put a team away. Once you jump out to a lead, I think the best teams capitalize and continue to expand and really don't give them a chance to come up for air."

So the most important swing of the Miguel Cairo Era might well have been taken by Lowe, the left-handed-hitting first baseman who came up to bat with two on and two out in the top of the first and proceeded to drive a hanging curveball from Pallante down the right field line and over the fence for a three-run homer and a quick 3-0 lead.

It was Lowe’s 14th homer of the season, his RBI total now up to 61 despite an OPS that has been hovering around .700 for a while now. That puts him on pace for 25 homers and 107 RBI, totals accrued by only one player in major league history who finished with an OPS under .700: Joe Pepitone of the 1964 Yankees.

"I'm just looking for a chance to contribute every day," Lowe said. "And if it's driving in runs, then it's driving in runs. If it's playing defense, it's defense. Anything I can do to help the team win is the only thing that matters."

Those three early runs already had to be considered a godsend to Gore, whose 4-8 record despite a 3.02 ERA underscores the lack of offensive support he’s received from his teammates. Imagine then how the left-hander must have felt when they added three more runs in the top of the fourth, getting five hits from the bottom two-thirds of their lineup: doubles by Josh Bell and Call, singles by Lowe, Brady House and Jacob Young.

That rally ensured this would be only the third time this season the Nationals scored more than three runs while Gore was still in the game.

"It's always nice to have a lead," Gore said. "But as a pitcher, you still want to pitch what your plan was going in. You try to stay as if it was a 0-0 game. But I think for the group, it's always nice to take a lead early and don't have to come from behind the whole game, which is nice."

And they weren’t done. When Rosario, batting third against the right-handed Pallante, absolutely destroyed a fastball and sent it soaring 434 feet beyond the left field bullpen, the lead was 7-1. And when Wood, facing left-handed reliever John King in the top of the seventh, connected on a pitch at 115.9 mph and sent it flying to right-center for his 24th homer of the season, the lead was 8-1 and the rout was on.

"I didn't see that," Cairo said. "I just saw the missile that left home plate and went to the fans."

Not that Gore needed that much support, but he happily took it on a night when he was in prime form. The left-hander gave up one run, but that came via a bloop double and a seeing-eye single through the left side of the infield. Not one of the Cardinals’ 16 batted balls off him reached an exit velocity of 100 mph.

Gore got stronger as the game progressed, recording six of his seven strikeouts between the third and sixth innings. And even with the abundance of punchouts, he still managed to be efficient, totaling only 89 pitches (fewer than 15 per inning).

Cairo surely could have pushed his ace to go deeper in the game. But on the heels of an 111-pitch outing against the Tigers, and with the All-Star Game coming up next, Gore took a seat after the sixth, free to sit back and enjoy a rare comfortable lead on a night he pitched.

"It makes it easier, because you attack the zone more," Cairo said. "And that's what he was doing. He gave us six good innings. And everyone contributed."