51ºÚÁÏ

MILWAUKEE — The sting of a lead lost in late innings and a game lost in extra innings was still fresh, still only a few minutes old, when Cardinals manager Oli Marmol mentioned the two relievers who had a victory slip from their fingertips.

In the eighth and ninth innings Saturday, lefty JoJo Romero walked three and right-hander Riley O’Brien hit two batters, respectively, to grease Milwaukee’s comeback.

“Those two guys have done really damn good,� Marmol said, leaning back in his office chair. “They’ve earned the opportunity to just say, ‘Go get them tomorrow.’�

What he said Saturday, they did Sunday.

Less than 24 hours later, Romero and O’Brien had a smaller lead to hold and the same innings to do it. Romero pitched around a single to keep the Brewers scoreless in the eighth, and O’Brien struck out two in the ninth to secure a 3-2 victory at American Family Field. Undone by mistakes elsewhere in the game Saturday, the scoreless innings by Romero and O’Brien covered for a baserunning blunder earlier in Sunday’s game that likely cost the Cardinals a rout.

Instead, the bullpen inherited a one-run game and froze it there with Romero and O’Brien making most of an immediate mulligan.

They did indeed get them tomorrow.

“It was good to get them out there the very next day,� Marmol said. “I was able to talk to (O’Brien), and he was feeling bad because of how that game ended. It’s nice for him to bounce back and do what he did. Just be on the attack.�

The win halted the Cardinals’ five-game losing streak and kept them from a winless six-game road trip. At 73-77, they return to 51ºÚÁÏ to open Monday their final homestand of the regular season and final two home series of John Mozeliak’s tenure as president of baseball operations.

Nolan Arenado will be awaiting them and is expected to be in the lineup for the first time since going on the injured list with a shoulder injury almost six weeks ago. The Cardinals have the opportunity to put together their preferred lineup for the first time since late July.

That was also the last time the Cardinals had their full-strength bullpen. Three trades at the deadline shipped out three high-leverage relievers, including All-Star closer Ryan Helsley, and forced a rewrite of how the Cardinals spelled relief.

They reorganized the bullpen around Matt Svanson and Kyle Leahy pitching multiple innings in close games and setting up for Romero or O’Brien to close. The first real hiccup came Saturday night when both closer options were out of sync. A game the Cardinals led by five runs at one point became a tie game in the ninth after Romero and O’Brien combined to allow five runs. Three of those runs came after the Brewer reached base by a walk or a bruise.

Marmol called it one of the most frustrating losses of the season but described Sunday morning how it gave him and the coaching staff a chance to meet with multiple players about the costly mistakes on offense and defense that happened before a reliever took the ball.

One of those conversations was with O’Brien.

“He just said, ‘Don’t stress it,’� the right-hander said. “‘You’ve been throwing well this year. Don’t even think about it. Just move on to the next one.�

The next one also hinged around a mistake.

In the second inning, the Cardinals forced Milwaukee lefty Jose Quintana to throw 40 pitches. Six of the first seven batters of the inning reached base. Quintana walked two, and the other four had base hits. The inning also featured two stolen bases for the Cardinals and an 11-pitch at-bat by rookie Nathan Church. The left-handed-hitting Church skipped an infield single against the lefty Quintana for an RBI.

But despite all of that traffic, all of those base runners buzzing about and all of the Brewers fielders giving chance, when the inning settled, Quintana was still in the game.

And the Cardinals led only 3-0.

The reason was a runner caught stealing after a walk.

Jose Fermin had an RBI single in the inning and stole second. He took third on Church’s RBI single, and that is where Fermin stood as Quintana walked Lars Nootbaar — until he strayed from the base. Fermin appeared to bite on a pump fake by the Brewers’ catcher, and he took off for home. Nootbaar was still unstrapping his protective pads when Fermin got caught in a rundown that ended with an out near third. Instead of the bases loaded, Quintana on tilt and right-handed hitter Ivan Herrera up, the Cardinals ran themselves out of a bigger rally.

“There is a level of frustration there,� Marmol said. “It’s not even that you can attribute it to youthfulness. It’s just a mistake. ... Those are the things you can’t do against a good team. This is a really good team across the way. It’s a very good roster. And they do a lot of things well. You can’t miss opportunities and let them off the hook like we did. You just can’t. We got away with it.�

How they got away with it Sunday when such mistakes cost them Saturday was simple.

They pitched.

Starter Miles Mikolas spun the Brewers with his curveball through five innings. Down 3-0, the Brewers got a leadoff double in their half of the inning. Mikolas (8-10) struck out the next three batters, two of them on curveballs and the third while he expected a curveball. He threw 21 curveballs in the game, and Milwaukee did not put one of them in play. Mikolas struck out five total, and the only home runs he allowed were solo shots by Washington University alumnus Caleb Durbin and backup catcher Danny Jansen.

The score was 3-2 when Mikolas yielded the mound to the bullpen.

Lefty John King struck out right-handed-hitting Durbin with two on the sixth inning, and that proved pivotal for how Milwaukee utilized its bench and how the Cardinals engineered the matchups for the later innings.

After the strikeout, the Brewers went to pinch hitter Blake Perkins. The Cardinals countered with Jorge Alcala to bring his 1 1/3 scoreless innings. And that put Perkins up first in the ninth inning. O’Brien struck him out on three pitches.

Three batters later, he had his second strikeout of the inning and fourth save of the season — but his first after bouncing back by returning to the same role, in the same spot.

“If anything, the mentality thing is the biggest part of it to win these games,� O’Brien said. “I felt good. The game didn’t speed up on me, I was under control and it just didn’t work out (Saturday). This helped me flush it. They trust me to do my job.�