When Cardinals right-hander Michael McGreevy ended a gritty, eight-pitch at bat by using a sweeper in the dirt to strike out Byron Buxton on Sunday, manager Oliver Marmol went and grabbed the team’s celebratory home run chain and playfully offered it up to relieved pitching coach Dusty Blake.

Yep, it was that kind of lost weekend for a Cardinals pitching staff that was hit hard and hit often by Buxton and the surprising Twins.

Minnesota scored twice off struggling left-handed reliever JoJo Romero in the seventh inning and strung together back-to-back, two-out doubles in the eighth inning to rally past the Cardinals 5-4 at Target Field.

The Cardinals got little relief at all from a bullpen that blew three leads on Friday night, struggled mightily again in Saturday’s win and lost leads of 1-0 and 4-2 on Sunday by surrendering six hits, three earned runs and a walk. Over the three-game series against the Twins, the Cardinals leaky bullpen yielded 11 hits, 10 earned runs, seven walks and three home runs.

“Some good games here, lots of offense and lots of back and forth and I feel like we kind of let them off the hook a little bit,” manager Oliver Marmol told Cardinals.TV. “It would have been nice to take two of three here, but unfortunately we weren’t able to.”

Alec Burleson hit his fifth home run of the road trip, joining Cardinals Hall of Fame slugger Mark McGwire as the only St. Louis players since 1892 to hit at least five long balls on a six-game road trip.

Standout rookie JJ Wetherholt, who made the first start of his MLB career at shortstop on Sunday, also got in on the long ball act by smashing a two-run shot in the sixth inning to give the Cards a 3-2 lead.

Wetherholt, a strong candidate to become the first Cardinals player to win the National League Rookie of the Year award since Albert Pujols in 2001, showed off how complete of a hitter he is in the seventh inning. At 2-2 in the count, Wetherholt got the slider he was looking for from left-hander Anthony Banda and he dropped a single into shallow left field to plate Jose Fermin, who had reached on the single that extended his personal hitting streak to eight games.

“(Burleson) got into another one and that was good to see and then JJ took some really good swings today and drove in three,” Marmol said. “So, there were some bright spots in what we did over the last several games.”

McGreevy, who continues to be the Cardinals’ most reliable starting pitcher, limited the Twins to two earned runs over six innings. He scattered seven hits and benefitted from a stellar defensive play by rookie first baseman Blaze Jordan, who snared a liner off the bat of Brooks Lee and dove to tag out Victor Caratini to end the sixth inning and strand a runner at second base.

“Our bullpen has been taxed and (Monday) is going to be interesting how we navigate that (game against the Padres at Busch Stadium),” said Marmol, pointing to how much the Cardinals needed a solid outing from McGreevy. “It was good for (McGreevy) to go out there and give us six. Soriano did a nice job today, but he left that sweeper up (to Ryan Kreidler) for that run, but other than that, I thought he did good.”

After thrashing the Mets in the first two games of the trip and hitting well throughout their time in Minnesota, the Cards felt like they seemingly deserved better than a series loss to the Twins and a 3-3 split overall. Instead, they will head bac to Busch Stadium pondering what could have been had their relief pitching fared better against Buxton (8 for 12, two homers, three doubles and three RBI) and the Twins. Awaiting the Cards on Monday night will be the Padres.

“This will be a good series and it will be good to get back home and play in front of our fans,” Marmol said.  

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