Brewers skid continues in blowout loss to St. Louis

Milwaukee is almost certainly going to win the NL Central, but the Brewers are not even close to playing the best baseball of the teams that make up the division. That distinction belongs to St. Louis, which hammered the Crew 10-2 Wednesday night to earn its 11th straight win.

In his first game off the injured list, Brett Anderson got lit up by the Cardinals. He served up a two-run homer to Tyler O’Neill in the first inning and gave up four more in the second, though none of those were earned thanks to some shoddy defense. Anderson was pulled with two outs in the second, his shortest start in which he was not removed due to injury since May 6, 2017.

The bullpen was not much better, allowing the Cardinals to tack on four more runs. That included Hunter Strickland giving up a two-run homer in the eighth inning to Paul Goldschmidt.

As it has for much of Milwaukee’s slump, the offense was nowhere to be found. Miles Mikolas was a big reason for that. He went seven innings, giving up two runs on four hits and striking out three. The righty improved to 2-2 on the season.

A double from Omar Narvaez and solo home run from Avisaíl Garcia proved to be the only offense the Brewers could muster. The top of their lineup — Kolton Wong, Eduardo Escobar and Christian Yelich — went a combined 0-for-11 as Milwaukee lost for a fourth straight time and its sixth loss in the last eight games.

The Brewers lead in the division stands at 8.5 over the Cardinals with 10 games to play, leaving the Crew’s magic number at three.

The two teams will face each other four times over the final week and a half of the season, including the series finale Thursday afternoon at American Family Field.