MILWAUKEE • As irritated and annoyed as Cardinals manager Tony La Russa was after his team had lost to Milwaukee in a close game Tuesday night, he was as close to deflated as he can get after his team was MIA Wednesday night in an 8-1 drubbing by the Brewers, yet another sub-.500 team that didn't roll over to the Cardinals.

"I remember there was some point when we were criticized because we didn't beat the good clubs," La Russa said. "Now, we beat the good clubs (Cincinnati, San Francisco) and we've just lost the season series to Houston (10-5) and to these guys (8-7). That's not good at all."

La Russa said he found no fault with his team's effort. He cautioned, however, "I played with effort, too. But that's not enough. In this league, it takes effort and execution. We've got to get more done."

Albert Pujols cracked his National League-leading 36th home run with two out in the first inning to give the Cardinals a 1-0 lead.

It was Pujols' first homer in 11 games and came off one of his favorite targets, Chris Capuano, against whom he is 17 for 30 with four homers.

That was the extent of the Cardinals' highlights, other than rookie catcher Matt Pagnozzi's first major-league hit in his first major-league start and 11/3 spotless innings by righthander Jason Motte, who recently had had a shoulder sprain.

Lefthanded rookie Jaime Garcia, one of the beacons of the club in this up-and-down season, had one of his few downs. Garcia (13-7), who had surrendered just three earned runs to the Brewers in four previous starts this year, was roughed up for three runs in the third inning and four in the fourth, and his night was over.

All seven scored with two outs, which La Russa found uncharacteristic for Garcia.

"One of his real keys is that he's been really good at putting hitters away," said La Russa. "Mistakes with men in scoring position ... you get burned."

Perhaps Garcia's biggest came on Ryan Braun's three-run homer in the fourth, which put the game away.

Pitching coach Dave Duncan had just been to the mound to implore Garcia to throw sinkers. Rookie catcher Pagnozzi called one. Garcia, for whatever reason, shook to a changeup, which wound up about 400 feet over the center-field wall.

"That was completely, 100 percent my fault," Garcia said. "I just didn't have any confidence tonight. Hopefully, I'll learn from that and move on."

It's almost incomprehensible, but the Cardinals haven't won back-to-back series since they beat Los Angeles and Philadelphia seven games out of eight just after the All-Star break in mid-July.

The Brewers' two-games-to-one victory in this series marked the seventh straight series the Cardinals have dropped to a team with a losing record. They are 5-16 in those 21 games and have scored two runs or fewer in 10 of them. And the Cardinals still have two series remaining with Pittsburgh and two with Chicago, both assured of being losing teams this season.

Wednesday's winner was Capuano, once an All-Star but a pitcher who missed more than two seasons in the majors after having a second elbow operation in 2008. The seven innings Capuano endured Wednesday marked his longest stint this season and longest in three years. The Cardinals mustered just four hits off Capuano (3-3), with Pujols contributing a double and Pagnozzi and Colby Rasmus singles.

"We took a lot of early strikes and then we panicked a little and chased a lot of pitches as the count got deeper and deeper. You usually do it the opposite. Get aggressive early and take the ugly stuff," said La Russa, who fielded a lineup with five players who had less than two seasons of major-league experience.

Of course, the more experienced lineups haven't done much better.

"I don't want to give scouting reports," La Russa said. "But there's something there that we're doing consistently. We've got better hitters against lefthanded pitching than we've done."

The Cardinals have lost their last six starts against lefthanded starters, and none of them was named Carlton or Sabathia.

"For a while, we were getting our wins against lefthanders," said La Russa. "But we're getting shut down pretty regularly now. We've got to do something about it."

La Russa thought Pagnozzi had done a good job handling Garcia and Garcia thought so, too.

The only one who didn't think so was Pagnozzi.

"There were a couple of firsts tonight," Pagnozzi said, "but, ultimately, you want to get that first win."

Pagnozzi, who had handled Garcia plenty in the minors, said he wished he had done a better job of helping get Garcia through trouble after the first two innings were uneventful.

"I would say bad pitch selection on my side," Garcia said. "(Pagnozzi) did a great job, actually.

"I wasn't really focused tonight. I don't know what was going on. It was just one of those days where I tried to do too much."

The most earned runs Garcia had allowed in any game this year had been five at Kansas City on June 27.

Since reaching a season high of 16 games over .500 at 65-49 on Aug. 13, the Cardinals have lost 16 of 23 games and almost find themselves in a position of having to win at least three of four games in Atlanta this weekend against a Braves team that has the majors' best home record at 49-19.

The Cardinals failed for the second night to gain a game on National League Central Division leader Cincinnati, which was drubbed by Colorado again. The Cardinals head to Atlanta still six games out of first place in the division and 6½ behind wild-card leader Atlanta.

When the Cardinals lost a series at Pittsburgh recently, Pujols had said, with feeling, that any major league team could beat any other on a given night. He stood by that philosophy Wednesday night, too. "You can't disrespect anyone," he said.

"They don't have anything to lose and they've played great. I'm sure they're probably saying they wish they could have played like that all year long."

But he said, "It's tough to make up ground when you're losing games. We've got to win games."

There are 25 games remaining and Pujols said, "We can't give up."

He also allowed, though, that no matter how well the lesser teams seem to play against the Cardinals, "We need to still take care of business. The reality of that is that we haven't."