The off-day reset seemed to come at the perfect time for these Cardinals, losers of five consecutive games, nicked up mightily and struggling to click in several facets of the game, with the lack of sustained offense among a multitude of concerns.

Well, have fun trying to pick yourself up against the reigning AL Cy Young and Triple Crown winner.

Perhaps most frustrating for the Cardinals is that they had their chances against right-hander Shane Bieber and the Indians in what became a 10-1 loss at Busch Stadium on Tuesday night, made even more painful when the Indians tacked on four runs in the ninth.

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But as has become all too common in this stretch -- six straight losses and eight in their last nine games -- sustained offense for the Cards sputtered, hard-contact-turned-hits went missing and, quite simply, runs were left to be desired.

“We just really haven't played our best this past week, and that happens,” said first baseman Paul Goldschmidt. “Tomorrow, you just try to play better. We've had some good things happen, just haven't been able to get the ‘W.’ Just keep getting after it and show up ready to go tomorrow.”

It’s been a struggle for the Cardinals in several arenas, a few of which are out of their control. It’s been the pitching, with starters not able to find their way deep into the game. It’s been the offense, stymied in the recent stretch. And it’s been both combined, with the lineup trying to play from behind in almost the totality of this stretch.

The Cardinals have led for only two and a half innings over their past six games.

“Our roster’s our roster; we feel good about the guys that are on it,” said manager Mike Shildt. “We have to -- and I have to -- figure out a way to be better with it. The biggest thing about being down consistently is always having to look up and fight and scratch and claw. … We need to play from out front, we need to get back to taking those consistent at-bats.”

Injuries -- to three-fifths of the starting rotation, one-third of the starting lineup and the depth, up and down the organization -- have only exacerbated that confluence of concerns.

“Honestly, it hasn't really been on our mind, or at least on my mind,” Goldschmidt said. “We know there's been injuries and different things that have happened, but every team is dealing with that. I think the focus is right; you keep doing what we believe is the right thing to prepare to win each day. It hasn't been good enough this past week, maybe two weeks, but keep getting after it and you know, hopefully, tomorrow will be different.”

A positive is that Tuesday was different for starter Carlos Martínez, but not different enough. He allowed 10 earned runs in just two-thirds of a frame his last start -- the onset of this six-game skid. This time, he staked the Cardinals to a 2-0 deficit after facing just three Cleveland batters. He hit a wall in the third -- a three-run homer to José Ramírez -- and was pinch-hit for at 71 pitches in the fourth so the Cardinals could try to capitalize on a bases-loaded rally in the fourth.

Martínez was not available to speak with reporters following the loss.

But even a solid outing from Martínez -- a “Tsunami” warning, as he proposed earlier in the season -- wouldn’t have don’t much to lift the offense past Bieber, with just one run and six hits on the evening.

“We need our own three-run homer on our side,” Shildt said. “Or a couple of them.”

Despite it all, St. Louis has preached confidence within itself, partly thanks to the close nature of the games it has lost, the knowledge that its plethora of players on the shelf are nearing returns and the fact that the club made the postseason last year in spite of its well-documented adversity.

“I'm tired of saying this; I sound like a broken record. But we’re about to break it,” Shildt said, “because we’re about to get hot.”

Why is that so?

“We’ve got a good team. We’ve got some guys hurt, for sure, but we’ve got a very good everyday lineup in there,” Shildt said. “We're going to get some guys back. … We just have to string it together, and we're capable of doing that. We just have to play from the front and get that starting pitching, that we have the ability to get, to be able to get into that fifth, sixth inning with the lead, and we're capable of doing that and I feel like we will.”