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Along the way they may have found their level.

Unable to use the week coming out of the All-Star break to achieve escape velocity from a .500 record, the Cardinals appear like a club that flew too close to the warm glow of contention only to see their starting pitching melt. For the fifth time in six games on the road trip, the Cardinals trailed by at least four runs after the third inning Wednesday, and such deep, early deficits have dragged on the lineup. A listless offense mustered zilch in a 6-0 loss to the Colorado Rockies that was the first shutout for them in 220 games.

The manager came out swinging in his post-game comments.

“Worst game we’ve played all year. Simply put,” Oliver Marmol said at the beginning of his postgame press conference. “Not a whole lot offensively. Approaches weren’t very good. In my opinion, that’s the worst game we played.”

The coming week will show if it’s a nadir — or a precipice.

Hoping to come out of the break rested and healthier than when they finished the first half on fumes, the Cardinals (52-51) started the back stretch 1-5 and outflanked by 21 runs in six days. Since they last won consecutive games at the end of June, the Cardinals have lost 13 of 18 games. They nosedived from 2 1/2 games back in the National League Central race to 9 1/2 games out and clinging to a 3 1/2-game gap in the mosh pit for the NL’s final wild card. The Cardinals host the team ahead of them, Mike Shildt’s San Diego Padres, for a four-game series this weekend at Busch Stadium.

Seven of their next 10 games are against the Padres.

They have the head-to-head opportunity to close or erase that gap — but there is an obstacle they must clear in addition to San Diego: the trade deadline.

In the midst of the upcoming Padres-laden stretch of the schedule, the July 31 deadline for deals arrives, and the Cardinals are leaning toward selling. They dispatched starter Erick Fedde on Wednesday morning by designating him for assignment, and they’ve alerted interested teams that they’ll engage with offers for three relievers who are pending free agents — All-Star closer Ryan Helsley, setup man Phil Maton and lefty Steven Matz. Count the Yankees, Phillies and Dodgers with at least some level of interest in one or more of the Cardinals’ relievers as the market develops.

The Cardinals’ front office has expressed a reluctance to trade young, controllable talents but won’t slam the door to all conversations that would include John King, Nolan Gorman, or others, according to sources. The Cardinals entered this season preparing to trade pending free agents at the deadline and collect talent for future years. The success in May that buoyed the Cardinals in the standings adjusted the perception of this year and the possibilities, but it didn’t appear to jar the Cardinals from their longer-term view despite the front office calling its direction “fluid.”

Marmol pushed back Wednesday when asked about the timing of the road skid as executive John Mozeliak said he would take some direction from the performance of the team.

“Dude I’m trying to get these guys better,” the manager said to the reporter who asked. “We’re taking our best shot. That’s the bottom line.”

This past week at Coors Field, president of baseball operations Mozeliak said the Cardinals have “a lot of players people have interest in and we have to sort through all that.”

The Post-Dispatch asked if there was any hesitance on the Cardinals’ part to strip the roster of key contributors that it would cause a precipitous drop in the standings while the team lauds the importance of developing young players in a winning environment.

“Opportunity comes in odd packages sometimes, so we’ll see,” Mozeliak said. “Teams have stripped away before and found ways to win. If I say you’re right, I’m conceding, and I’m not going to concede. That’s my answer.”

The previous time the Cardinals were a seller at the deadline — and the only other time during Mozeliak’s tenure leading baseball operations — they shed almost all of their pending free agents in an attempt to accumulate pitching depth. They were 47-61 on the deadline and bound headlong for the only losing season in the past 17 years. After the sale, the Cardinals went 24-30 — a .444 winning percentage that was a slight uptick from the .435 before the deadline.

This season, the Cardinals spent their first 85 games within reach of a playoff berth and even held one for a good stretch.

The parallels between 2023 and 2025 are only starting to emerge.

The ’23 starting rotation had a 5.08 ERA that ranked third-worst in the majors, second-worst for teams not playing home games in thin air. This year, the Cardinals relied on their defense even as they defied probability with a pitch-to-contact starting staff. The batted-ball luck — technical term — is catching up with them. The only starter on the road trip who didn’t allow at least five runs was Michael McGreevy, and he just rejoined the team from Class AAA Memphis.

The four starters on the road trip who have spent the season in the rotation allowed 29 earned runs in their combined 20 innings.

A hallmark of the ’23 season was early deficits and a lineup sabotaged by its attempt to overcome them.

In the past week, the Cardinals have been outscored 20 to 1 in the first three innings.

“At times when it happens, often people give into it. You’re human,” Marmol said. “It’s going to happen from time to time. You’re going to give into the fact that, gosh darn, how many do we have to score? You have to be able to separate it. (On Wednesday), I don’t feel like we did that well.

“We’ve done a decent amount of that (falling behind) after the break,” he added. “It does take it out of you. You have to be able to separate it. That’s part of being mentally tough. You have to separate what’s going on on that side of the ball and still take productive at-bats and keep your approach. I felt like we veered from that.”

The trends slowing the Cardinals met in the second inning Wednesday.

Starter Andre Pallante, one of the top groundball pitchers in the game, allowed five consecutive singles in the second inning. Two of the RBI singles were meek groundballs that found seams in the Cardinals’ defense. The right-hander said he was “committed to throwing my fastball inside” because he was instructed to. “Where my pitches play the best,” he explained. At least three of the singles came on inside fastballs.

Pallante sparked the rally with a leadoff walk, but the singles that evaded fielders led to a 4-0 lead. Ground balls got through. Cardinals were down early.

“It sucks,” shortstop Masyn Winn said. “We go down 4-0. In a park like this we definitely should be able to come back from that. Getting shut out at this field is heartbreaking for sure.”

But whether the mile-high zero is the lowest point of the season is yet to be mapped.

The contours of the summer are starting to bunch into steep outcomes — a cliff of losses right before a potential gorge of trades. Expected contributors are absent with injuries while other cornerstone players are trying to play through them. The rotation is rocky. And veteran, high-leverage arms in the bullpen are about to be auctioned off.

Comments from club officials have also subtly shifted to being entirely about getting better in the weeks, months, and years ahead not being better now.

“We obviously know in a week or so some guys may not be here,” Winn said. “We might have new faces. I don’t think that changes how we play. It might be in the back of our mind how — it sucks that Fedde is gone. I think that was in the back of a couple of people’s minds. It is what it is. We still have to go out there and play ball.”