MILWAUKEE -- A lot of things happened on Tuesday night at Miller Park, few of which were good for the home team.

The Brewers fell another game back in both the division and the chase for a Wild Card. Adrian Houser, a bright spot amid a stormy year for Milwaukee’s starting pitchers, was forced out early with a bad hip. Yadier Molina hit two more home runs, including a tie-breaking two-run shot off the foul pole in the seventh inning. And the Brewers’ last hope, Hernan Perez, thought he had a game-tying three-run home run with two outs in the ninth inning, only to watch his fly ball fall short for the game-ending out.

If all that were not enough to dampen the mood during the Brewers’ 6-3 loss to the Cardinals, there was even a rain delay amid the Cardinals’ go-ahead rally.

• Box score

Yes, a rain delay at a stadium with a convertible dome.

When it rains, it pours.

“It’s really tough,” Houser said. “This is a big stretch for us, and we need to win some ballgames.”

Molina homered twice in the game and has hit three of his seven home runs this season over the past two nights, both Cardinals victories against a Brewers team at risk of falling out of the National League postseason picture. Milwaukee is 6 1/2 games back of St. Louis in the NL Central and 3 1/2 games back of the Cubs for the second Wild Card.

Last season, when it took an eight-game winning streak, including a victory in Game 163 against the Cubs, to clinch a division title, the Brewers were never more than six games out of first place.

“We’re all staying as positive as we can,” said Matt Albers, the Brewers' reliever who endured both Molina’s go-ahead homer and the rain delay in the soggy seventh. “Obviously, we know we have to start winning some games.”

Houser limited the Cardinals to one run, which came on Molina’s first home run of the night, but was lifted after five innings and 74 pitches in a 1-1 tie because of a sore left hip. Junior Guerra worked a 1-2-3 sixth before Albers found trouble an inning later.

In the seventh, Paul DeJong walked on five pitches with one out in the seventh before Molina turned on a sinker from Albers that was down and in, out of the strike zone, and managed to keep it just fair down the left-field line. When the baseball clanged off the foul pole, the Cardinals had a 3-1 lead.

"I kind of shook to that pitch, trying to get a double play. Obviously, he's kind of thinking the same thing along with me and put a good swing on it,” Albers said. “It wasn't necessarily a bad pitch; it was kind of where I wanted to throw it. But it was the wrong pitch. I should have gone something away. Sinker away, slider away."

Albers would have plenty of time to lament that decision. Two batters later, with Harrison Bader at the plate, it began to pour and players were waved off the field by home-plate umpire and crew chief Alfonso Marquez while the roof closed and the grounds crew dried the dirt around the pitcher’s mound and home plate.

St. Louis added another run via Kolten Wong’s pinch-hit double when play resumed, and that bit of insurance proved decisive when Brewers catcher Yasmani Grandal smashed a two-run home run off Andrew Miller in the eighth. It was Grandal’s second homer since the All-Star break.

The Cardinals tacked on two more runs against rookie reliever Devin Williams -- Brewers manager Craig Counsell said he didn’t pitch Josh Hader in a 4-3 game because he didn’t want to spend that “capital” with the team trailing -- but Milwaukee made it interesting in the bottom of the ninth. With two runners on and St. Louis closer Carlos Martinez approaching 30 pitches, Perez hit a deep fly ball he was “90 percent sure” was bound for the visitors’ bullpen in right-center field. But right fielder Dexter Fowler squeezed it at the wall for the game-ending out.

Would an open roof have made a difference? One theory of Miller Park is that the baseball flies better with the roof open.

“I put a good swing on it. I hit it good,” Perez said. “I think the ball was going for a homer.”

It all turned south in the seventh, though the rain delay was not completely unprecedented. In August 2012, a Phillies-Brewers game was delayed for seven minutes in a similar situation by a pop-up storm.

“This game had a little bit of everything, and we just didn’t do enough to win it,” Counsell said. “We can look at all parts of the game. We just didn’t do enough. It’s not [all] offense. We all have to do a little bit better. We’re not doing enough to win games. We’re coming up a little short.”