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“We sucked. We didn’t score any runs,” leadoff hitter Brendan Donovan said. “We’re on to Chicago. That’s all I got.”

He would elaborate later, but his point was clear.

What more could he add after a 5-0 loss to Pittsburgh when the Cardinals side of the box scores from the Pirates’ sweep said everything with a whole lot of nothing?

The Cardinals reach the most important series yet of their season — a holiday weekend trip to Wrigley Field to face the first-place Cubs — coming off one of their least effective series at Pittsburgh in generations. For the first time since October 1976, the Pirates held the Cardinals without a run for three consecutive shutouts and a three-game series sweep. The Cardinals' past five losses have all been shutouts, and they’ve gone 49 consecutive innings against a National League opponent without scoring a run.

Without Nolan Arenado and Willson Contreras in Wednesday’s lineup due to bruised hands, the Cardinals are battered, tattered, and wheezing after playing 15 games in the past 14 days. As Post-Dispatch sports columnist Benjamin Hochman wrote: No one has needed a day off this badly “in Chicago since Ferris Bueller’s.”

Especially after questions all week echoed like a droning economics teacher.

Offense?

Offense?

Offense?

Anyone? Anyone?

“You’ve got Nado out. You’ve got Contreras out,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “Those are key parts to our offense. When you don’t have them, it’s tough to score. We actually put some decent swings on the ball. Everything we hit found a glove, not grass.”

Perhaps the best illustration of the Cardinals’ struggles to produce timely hits, not just any hits, came Wednesday when a pen stroke produced as many hits with runners in scoring position as the Cardinals did all week at PNC Park. With a teammate at second base, Lars Nootbaar hit a hard groundball for a difficult play that was initially ruled an error. Upon further review, the official scorer revised the decision and the scorebook to award Nootbaar a hit. That changed the Cardinals from 0 for 9 through three innings with runners in scoring position to 1 for 9. Though the one did not produce a run.

The Cardinals did not have an at-bat with a runner in scoring position during Monday’s shutout, and they finished the series 2 for 23.

Neither of the two hits delivered a run.

“Just try to be competitive,” Donovan said. “I thought I took some good swings today, hit two balls hard, which then you kind of look at the overall day and, oh, left runners on. But I still like the swing. I like my swings overall. It’s part of it. Two months you’re going to feel great. Two months you’re going to feel terrible. What do you do the other two months?”

Donovan recently peeked “under the hood” of his numbers to see if the metrics had remained the same even as his batting average tumbled. During the Cardinals’ recent 15-game fortnight, their leadoff hitters' average dropped from .323 to .293, and he’s batted in that stretch 8 for 54 (.148). His drip coincides with the Cardinals playing stretches of June without Ivan Herrera (hamstring) and with a limited Lars Nootbaar (ribcage), not to mention the three right-handed hitters unavailable for most of the series in Pittsburgh: Arenado (two games), Contreras (1 1/2 games), and Jordan Walker (all three).

Donovan opened Wednesday’s game with a double to give the Cardinals an immediate chance, just as they often had Tuesday night against Paul Skenes.

Early in his seven shutout innings, Mitch Keller (3-10) walked Alec Burleson, hit Nootbaar, and the Cardinals had the bases loaded with two outs. And the next two batters due up spent most of June at Class AAA Memphis.

“Our ability to bunch hits together is our ability to make contact,” Marmol said. “So we did that, and it was just at people. The approach is controllable.”

Fresh off his first complete-game shutout in a decade, Sonny Gray pitched on regular rest and was sharp through 6 1/3 innings. The two runs he allowed while on the mound were delivered by Tommy Pham RBI singles — one in the second and another in seventh. The Cardinals had one runner in scoring position each of the first three innings, and yet because of their zeroes in those situations they trailed 1-0 going into the seventh.

A leadoff walk and two singles off Gray (8-3) brought reliever Riley O’Brien in with two on and a 2-0 deficit to hold. He got three groundballs.

Two found seams and bounced through to produce runs.

What the Pirates’ No. 9 and leadoff hitters did in back-to-back at-bats with groundball singles in the seventh to produce RBIs was what the Cardinals could not do for 27 innings.

Hardly a rock-em, sock-em lineup like the power-mad Cubs offense, the Cardinals are in the business of accumulating hits. Their homer binges against the Cubs aside, the Cardinals string hits together and usually score in clusters. Their offense can be similar to their pitcher. The staff invites contact and sometimes, as it did with O’Brien in the seventh, that contact slips through the defense. Their lineup makes contact and often, as it did all week at PNC, that contact does not find ways to slip through.

The Pirates swept their six-game homestand by holding the Cardinals and Mets to four runs combined. 

The Cardinals had almost as many hits (10) and more baserunners (14) than strikeouts (12) against young lion Skenes and PNC Park K-king Keller — and yet no runs.

“This series is frustrating,” Donovan said. “It’s just one blip on the radar of 162 (games). So, is it frustrating? Absolutely. They just beat us. They’re playing good ball. We were playing good ball. And they shut us down. On to Chicago.”

The last time the Pirates swept a series with three shutouts against the Cardinals, the Bucs three starters — Jerry Reuss, Jim Rooker, and John Candelaria — pitched all 27 innings, nine each. The series ended with a doubleheader, and each half was a 1-0 Pittsburgh victory. The final game ended both teams' season on a walk-off single. The last time the Cardinals were shut out for a three-game series anywhere was Atlanta in 2015. That series also ended in a doubleheader. A few days later the 100-win Cardinals started the playoffs.

The final stretch of a grueling June for this year’s Cardinals played out in stanzas. There were the percussive wins against the Cubs in the first two games of their visit to Busch, and then the shutouts spun by lefties to split that series in the next two games. There was the jet to Cleveland and upbeat three-game sweep of the Guardians. That was followed by a bus ride to Pittsburgh and the downbeat of sinking into three shutouts along the shores of the Allegheny River.

And now a Thursday off to regroup.

Life moves pretty fast.

“We’ll flush this series,” Marmol said. “Swept the last one. Got swept here. We’ll flush this one. Get some rest and get ready for Chicago. We’ve been looking forward to that one.”