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When the Cardinals talk about getting at-bats and innings and just the time for young players to show now what they can be for the club’s future, they mean through the marathon of this season.

The same applies to the sprint of a game.

A reliever who established himself in the majors this past season because of his ability to cruise through a lineup once, Matthew Liberatore encountered a speedbump Tuesday night against the Los Angeles Angels as a starter trying to get through a lineup again. But he got the time to work through it, the innings to show he could, and emerged not as a reliever yanked at the first sign of traffic but as a starter able to drive on after it. The Angels tagged him with three runs in the span of five pitches. He regrouped and held them there through six innings.

“The questions would have been very different if he didn’t come back from it,� manager Oliver Marmol said. “We’d be sitting here and going, ‘Well, we told you — he’s a reliever.’ Well, have at it. He pushed through it, found a way to still give you a couple more innings after that. And that’s what you want to see out of him. That’s what he’s capable of doing.

“It’s good to see him have an opportunity to show it.�

A subplot to the standings this Cardinals season is the development of young players and the opportunity the club committed to giving them. What is true for Liberatore on the mound is there for Jordan Walker in right field and at the plate, where he homered and had two RBIs on Tuesday. It’s there for Victor Scott II in center, or Chris Roycroft, Kyle Leahy, and Ryan Fernandez out of the bullpen.

Within their second consecutive loss to the Angels in extra innings, the Cardinals had 11 innings Tuesday to offer examples of choices they’ll make throughout the season with development as their stated priority. Sometimes the game decides, as it did with Roycroft being thrust into the decisive 11th inning of the 9-7 loss at Busch Stadium. Sometimes the manager decides, as he did with Luken Baker in the 10th inning to rally the Cardinals from a three-run deficit to force the 11th inning at all.

And sometimes there’s a positive that doesn’t factor in the final decision at all.

That was Liberatore after the third inning Tuesday.

“I was able to regather, regroup, and go back after guys,� Liberatore said.

The towering lefty put himself on the “runway� for opportunity with a strong spring training that forced the Cardinals to rewrite their rotation plans. Rather than straddling the fence and naming him their sixth starter, the Cardinals put Liberatore in the rotation and pledged to give him a long look there. Marmol repeated that promise Tuesday afternoon in his office at the ballpark, stressing that “this isn’t you’ve got three starts, show us what you’ve got. That’s not what we’re doing here.� What they’re doing is giving him repeated chances to show how he does when he starts every sixth day, routine and all.

To prepare for this, Liberatore adjusted his workouts, nutrition, and mental training for the season. He spoke late Tuesday about journaling to collect and focus his thoughts. One that he adopted was that he wasn’t only pitching for himself but for a bigger, common good. Coming out of the bullpen most of the past season showed him how a starter can save the bullpen by covering innings. And there are few bigger days to do that than after an extra-innings game.

The Angels edged the Cardinals in the 10th inning Monday, and that set up Liberatore to do exactly what he described — pitch deep into a game to avoid straining the relievers.

“You definitely don’t want to go three and done,� he said.

But there he was in the third inning, a lead lost and a game teetering.

Liberatore buzzed through his first inning on 14 pitches, 13 of which were strikes. He finished a scoreless first by striking out former MVP Mike Trout on four pitches — challenging him first with a series of fastballs that zipped at 95 mph and 96.4 mph before plunging an 87.2-mph slider beneath the zone. Trout fished for it and Liberatore had his second of four strikeouts.

Liberatore retired the first eight Angels he faced, and his first time through the order he had more outs collected (eight) than balls thrown (seven).

In the third, his velocity dipped and the Angels pounced.

In the span of five pitches, all of them with two outs, Tim Anderson singled, Taylor Ward singled, Luis Rengifo doubled, and Mike Trout threaded a two-run double down the third-base line. The 1-0 lead Liberatore started the inning with vanished in a blink to become a 3-1 deficit.

That’s the filter between relief and starting — that ability to show the hitters something different a second time, something that can pierce through the short bursts of effectiveness and press deeper, efficiently into a game. There’s pitching an important inning and there’s logging essential innings, and the Cardinals are going to invest the time for Liberatore, 25, to show which he can be.

“When you look at our future, he’s a part of what we’re building here,� Marmol said. “Worst-case scenario, from now, if he’s in the bullpen, we know he’s capable of giving you multiple innings in the bullpen or even pitching high leverage or closing if needed. That’s a given. … Put yourself in his shoes. He’s a good reliever. He hasn’t had success as a starter. Just keep him as a reliever. It’s easy. We know he’s a good reliever. You have to find out if you can truly be a starter.

“You want to allow that some time to see if it plays as a starter.�

Liberatore got a groundout to get out of the third inning and when given those added innings he filled them for the Cardinals. Liberatore got eight outs from the final seven batters he faced. Following Trout’s double in the third, Liberatore allowed two hits, and he went a stretch of seven batters with only one ball leaving the infield. He regained some of the velocity he flashed in the first inning. But he also showed that he could gather outs efficiently in other ways.

Liberatore got only four swings and misses compared to 18 balls in play, but seven of those 18 were groundouts and they got him eight outs.

“I was able to reset and refocus and find some more velo for the last three,� Liberatore said. “Just being able to get the fastball in on guys when I needed to. Being able to get the slider under the (zone). The changeup — I gave up the hit on it. But I got the swing I wanted on that pitch. I was able to keep them off-balance because of that.�

Liberatore authored the Cardinals’ second quality start of the season.

Those six innings mattered more when the offense, befuddled by finesse nemesis Kyle Hendricks for six innings, stirred in the late innings. Nolan Arenado twice tied the game with a ball in play — once because a grounder led to a throwing error that scored a run for a 3-3 tie in the eighth. In the 10th, the Cardinals trailed by three runs before Arenado’s RBI single knotted the game, 6-6, and shoved it into the 11th. Sandwiched around those events were two examples of the other types of development Marmol and his staff must consider: The ones the game forces.

“The reality is we only talk about development when we’re taking a player out of something,� Marmol said. “We don’t talk about developing the player who is coming into the situation.�

In the 10th, it was Alec Burleson coming out of the game so Baker could come in for a pinch-hit spot against a lefty. It was the exact matchup that Baker spent the final week of spring training preparing for and building a routine for — and here it was. He socked a two-run double off the lefty and revived the Cardinals to force an 11th. And in that inning, Fernandez yielded the mound to Roycroft, who has received increasingly pivotal innings.

The Cardinals wanted to avoid using veteran Phil Maton on Tuesday, give him a break, and that left Roycroft not as the development, see-what-he’s got option.

He was the only option.

The right-hander got two outs before the Angels soared for three runs, two of which came on a triple. One three-run deficit the Cardinals could overcome. The second proved two too much.

There are decisions the game forces.

There are decisions the manager chooses.

And then there are decisions performance makes.

Those are the easiest decisions when development is the goal.

“And I wanted to go back out for the seventh,� Liberatore said. “Every inning that I get to throw is a bigger deal than the last one.�