Dustin May’s career-best one-hit, complete-game, shutout back on June 15 is proving costly for a Cardinals club that could use the hard-throwing right-hander’s best stuff to dig them out of a skid.

May, who was slated to start against the Marlins at Busch Stadium on Saturday night, will be skipped in the rotation because of what manager Oliver Marmol dubbed as lower back tightness. Andre Pallante, who has won his last four innings, will start in place of May on Saturday with that outing made possible by Thursday night’s rain out against the Diamondbacks.

The Cardinals head into Saturday having dropped five of their last seven games. They lost 4-0 to the Marlins on Friday night after mustering just three hits. The Cards have scored just 10 runs and hammered out 21 hits over their last four games.

Kyle Leahy, who pitched well earlier in the week over seven scoreless innings against the Dbacks, will start Sunday’s series finale against the Marlins.

May, 28, fired the first complete-game shutout of his MLB career on May 15 when he blanked the Padres and struck out nine in the process. He needed just 101 pitches in that outing, but it seemed to adversely affect him for his next outing six days later in Kansas City. May surrendered six hits, six earned runs and two homers and was pulled after just two innings of work in a game the Cardinals won 12-10.     

“He experienced some tight back (issues) last time out,” Marmol told reporters after his team’s loss to the Marlins at Busch Stadium on Friday night. “When you look at him going complete game (against the Padres) and then having to come back and throw after that outing, it tightened up on him. We took him out of his last (start) early for a combination of things, but that was a big part of it.”

May, whose career has been marred by two arm surgeries and a life-threatening esophageal tear, signed a one-year, $12.5 million free-agent deal with the Cardinals last December. He and the Cardinals have a mutual option on the contract for 2027, but he could be long gone by then if the Cardinals shop him at the trade deadline and hope that he can return a haul of prospects.

For the season, May is 5-6 with a 4.30 ERA over 15 starts. In 83 2/3 innings, he struck out 77 hitters and has surrendered seven home runs. The opposition is hitting .250 off him for the season.  

“We want to make sure we can get on the other side of this and not have him try to push through it,” Marmol said. “To make sure that he finishes strong, we’ll skip him.”

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