MILWAUKEE -- No pitcher has ever surrendered three home runs in more than three consecutive starts, and Brewers manager Craig Counsell wasn’t about to let Corbin Burnes be the first.

Burnes served up two more homers on fastballs before Counsell pulled the plug with his starter facing a five-run deficit in the fourth inning of the Brewers’ 6-3 loss to the Cardinals on Wednesday at Miller Park. St. Louis denied Christian Yelich a home run for the first time in seven matchups this season, and also denied Milwaukee a three-game sweep.

Even with the starting rotation stretched thin by Freddy Peralta’s stint on the 10-day injured list, Counsell sounded ready to temporarily remove 24-year-old Burnes from the rotation.  

“I think we’re going to have a longer conversation this time,” said Counsell, “and try to figure out the best way to get him on track.”

It doesn’t take an advanced degree in analytics to see Burnes’ problem, but that education might come in handy to come up with a solution for a prospect whose stuff is too good to be pitching so poorly. Burnes has yielded 11 home runs in his first four Major League starts while pitching 17 2/3 innings. That’s on pace for 82 home runs in a 30-start season.

The record, you ask? The dubious Major League mark for home runs allowed belongs to a Hall of Famer, Bert Blyleven. He gave up 50 in 1986, but also pitched 271 2/3 innings, and had to navigate lineups that included designated hitters.

The National League record for home runs allowed is 48, for 2000 Houston Astro Jose Lima. The Brewers record belongs to Braden Looper, who gave up 39 homers in 2009.

“It’s tough, but you have to keep working. It’s not just going to come,” Burnes said. “I hope [to remain in the rotation]. I’m going to come in every single day and keep putting in the work, keep doing what I can to get better. Frankly, I haven’t done my job these first four starts.”

The Brewers have thus far professed patience because Burnes is a four-pitch prospect, a former organizational player of the year, with as high a ceiling as any pitcher Milwaukee has advanced through its Minor League chain in years.

So, they have let him pitch through his early-season struggles. Burnes, however, has regressed with each start. His game scores, a metric devised by Bill James to assess starting pitchers, has dropped each time he’s taken the mound. So have his strikeouts, from 12 in his season debut to six on April 6 against the Cubs to three apiece on April 12 at the Angels and on Wednesday against the Cardinals.

On Wednesday, Burnes was charged with five earned runs on nine hits with two walks and three strikeouts while recording 10 outs.

The problem lies in Burnes’ fastball. Ten of the 11 home runs off him this season have been on fastballs; nine four-seamers and one two-seamer. Eight of the Cardinals’ nine hits off Burnes on Wednesday came on four-seam fastballs. Four left the bat at north of 100 mph, according to Statcast, including Marcell Ozuna’s 103.2 mph home run leading off the second inning and Matt Carpenter’s 108.9 mph home run with one out in the fourth. There were other loud outs on fastballs, illustrating how close Burnes came to a true blow-up start. Carpenter’s 106.4 mph lineout at Yelich ended the second inning with two runners in scoring position, and Jose Martinez’s 103.4 mph double play grounder to shortstop Orlando Arcia helped prevent a big inning in the third.

“We keep getting beat by the heater,” Burnes said. “We keep leaving them over the plate, and they’re getting crushed.

Before you say, “throw something else,” it’s not that simple, Burnes said. He has a sensational slider, but his fastball will always be his best pitch. Beyond that, throwing breaking balls early in counts risks falling into counts that make it even more obvious for hitters that a fastball is coming.

“Look, I don’t care how well you’re made up. This is a tough stretch to go through and we have to acknowledge that,” Counsell said. “This would shake anybody. That’s part of this, for sure. Corbin is a tough kid and he is a competitive kid, and he will rebound from this. We have to make sure we figure out the right way to allow him to do that. Give him the best way to do that.

“He’s a really important pitcher for us, and he’s got stuff to be a heck of a pitcher. We’re just not seeing it right now, so we have to figure out the best way to get that.”