ST. LOUIS -- Brewers manager Craig Counsell has fought this battle with sportswriters on many an afternoon over the years. He’s on the record saying that whether runs come via booming home runs or broken-bat base hits, he’ll take them anyway he can get them.

But this year’s club is so far to the former extreme that it’s raising the debate once again: Are the Brewers too reliant on the home run?

In the matter of boom or bust, it was bust once again on Tuesday night at Busch Stadium, where three solo home runs -- two for an emergent Travis Shaw, one for Orlando Arcia -- accounted for the Brewers’ only runs in a 4-3 loss to the Cardinals.

St. Louis scored one run on three successive singles with two outs in the second inning, another run via a two-out walk followed by a stolen base and a single in the fifth before Paul DeJong homered off Alex Wilson leading off a two-run eighth inning that sent the Brewers to their sixth loss in seven games.

Brewers hitters, meanwhile, only stacked multiple hits in the same inning once. It was the sixth, when Hernán Pérez singled following Shaw’s 414-foot home run. When Shaw homered again off Jordan Hicks in the ninth, Shaw’s third home run in his last five at-bats after a long slump, it marked the Brewers’ 22nd consecutive run scored via the home run.

Milwaukee is on pace to obliterate the all-time record for percentage of runs scored via the long ball. The 2010 Blue Jays homered for 53.1 percent of their runs. This year’s Brewers have homered for 71.1 percent of their runs. No other team will enter play Wednesday north of 60 percent.

It’s been a full week since Milwaukee manufactured a run; Christian Yelich singled home Perez in the eighth inning of the Brewers’ April 17 loss to the Cardinals at Miller Park.

That seems like a problem.

“I will tell you the overall theme offensively is you want to be able to compete and win every type of game you’re in,” said Brewers hitting coach Andy Haines. “You don’t want to be a one trick pony. You’re going to be in games where you have to execute and runs are at a premium. We have to be able to win those types of games and execute in those types of games. Then you want to be a dangerous enough offense that when runs are being scored, you can score a bunch of runs to win that game.

“That’s the goal offensively. That’s the overarching answer to your question. I think offensively, we’re dangerous. At times, we need to move the ball around more. Shorten up. I call it ‘barrel accuracy.’ We need to be that team when it’s needed. At times, we have been.

“It has been a little extreme how many runs we’re scoring by the home run. It’s a little bit of an anomaly right now. You look at Christian Yelich, who can move the ball around and use the whole field. Well, a lot of his hits are home runs right now.”

So, Haines sees a club with the capability to score in other ways. And the numbers support the notion that the Brewers are a potent enough offense. They entered Tuesday in the top half of MLB’s 30 teams in runs per game (4.92, 14th), OPS (.796, ninth), two-out OPS (.881, third) and OPS with runners in scoring position (.970, first). And yes, they were at the top of the National League and second in MLB with 1.96 home runs per game.

“Everyone thinks we’re swinging for the fences the entire time. That’s not accurate,” said Shaw on Tuesday afternoon. “But it is true that the way the game is now, guys are throwing harder and you’re taught to hit balls in the air. … You don’t want to rely on the home run. I think it’s bad to rely on it. But I also don’t think we’re sitting here trying to only hit home runs.”

Perhaps the Brewers have been too reliant on Yelich, who got off to a start so blistering that it covered some of the team’s deficiencies. The Cardinals, whom Yelich torched in two series at Miller Park, have held him to 0-for-6 in the first two games of this series, including 0-for-2 with two walks on Tuesday.

Counsell called Shaw’s breakout the silver lining of the the last two nights. The Brewers also expect to have second baseman Mike Moustakas back from a finger injury when the road trip shifts to Citi Field later this week, finally snapping a streak of four consecutive series against the Dodgers and Cardinals, who own the NL’s top two winning percentages.

"There's no hiding it, Christian has carried us this year,” Shaw said. “The last 5-6 games, the teams have made sure Christian doesn't beat them. It's time for guys behind him, myself included, to step up and pick up the slack a little bit."