MILWAUKEE — Whatever elation the Cardinals carried out of Friday’s celebration of baseball’s longest-tenured active battery and a season-high show of six homers and 15 runs was quickly history by the opening innings of Saturday’s game.
As loudly and emphatically as the Cardinals’ offense asserted itself Friday against Milwaukee it dimmed till it vanished Saturday, lost in the grip of Adrian Houser.
The other Brewers starter in a rotation spiked with All-Stars, Houser authored a three-hit shutout to lift the first-place Brewers to a 4-0 victory at American Family Field. Houser was flawless through five, dominant through all nine, and probably not until then a leading candidate to end the Brewers’ drought without a shutout since Kyle Lohse threw one in September 2014.