It took three batters. Bryan Baker threw 10 pitches. All less than five minutes for the Orioles’ hopes of extending their season-high three-game winning streak — a 72-hour high — to evaporate.

Baker has been, by most measures, Baltimore’s best reliever this season. Tuesday was his roughest outing by far, costing the Orioles in a 7-4 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on a slippery Tuesday night at Camden Yards fighting through a consistent drizzle.

The 30-year-old right-hander checked in for Yennier Cano to start the eighth inning. He struck out Alec Burleson on three pitches. It was a free-fall from there in his first loss of the season, raising his ERA from 1.93 to 3.00.

Cardinals eight-time All-Star Nolan Arenado turned and burned on a slider. Baker stood a few steps off the mound and watched it sail toward left field as if it were flying in slow motion. His shoulders looked tense, as if trying to will it back into the park. The moment Arenado’s go-ahead, 400-foot home run landed in the splash zone, Baker’s shoulders drooped. Then he got right back on the saddle.

Cardinals infielder Nolan Gorman smacked a changeup toward center field. Heston Kjerstad slid across the warning track, mistiming the fly ball. It landed on the dirt, and by the time center fielder Jorge Mateo reached the cutoff man, Gorman was already sliding into third for his first extra-base hit in over a month. Baker ambled back toward the mound.

Cardinals right fielder Jordan Walker lifted a fastball in the upper part of the zone toward center field. Mateo mistimed his jump, the ball ricocheted off the wall and Walker dove into third for the first time all year.

He popped up and flexed toward the visiting dugout. Mateo conceded the “uncomfortable” conditions made it tougher to track the ball. “It just didn’t work out,” said the longtime infielder, who was making just his 14th appearance in the outfield in a Baltimore uniform. Baker couldn’t end this nightmare fast enough.

Interim manager Tony Mansolino yanked him after 2/3 of an inning. Baker finished with a pair of strikeouts, a walk and three earned runs.

“We’ve really relied on him heavily here recently, and he has been so good,” Mansolino said. “When we put him out there, we know we’re asking a lot, but we’re asking a lot of that whole group right now.”

Baltimore played five games in four days leading into Tuesday because of a doubleheader in Boston. One of those required extras. It was taxing on the bullpen. “We’ve been on fumes for a few days,” Mansolino said.

It came back to bite them on a night they could have set up a Wednesday sweep opportunity, something Baltimore hasn’t done all season.

Ryan O’Hearn continued his hot start with a three-run homer that gave the Orioles a 4-3 lead in the fifth. His fingerprints were all over the win streak, now with an on-base streak of 14 games, including his second long ball this week. In the seventh, Keegan Akin issued a leadoff walk to Victor Scott II, who advanced to third on Lars Nootbaar’s double and scored on Masyn Winn’s single to left. Then, suddenly, a promising 4-4 tie unraveled to an insurmountable three-run hole in the eighth.

Memorial Day Weekend showed as much collective promise as the Orioles (19-35) have had all season. For much of this year, their best baseball has ushered in their worst in the days that followed. Injuries and brutal pitching have put them far behind the eight ball. But this wacky weekend — which included a Little League home run and a pair of unlikely heroes — seemed a prime chance at a climb toward relevance.

Tuesday doesn’t define whether that’s still possible. But it sucked all the air out of a surging clubhouse. Baseball can be cruel like that.

Postgame analysis

Tomoyuki Sugano continues to do one thing better than any pitcher on Baltimore’s staff: flush a rocky start and hold the line.

The Cardinals managed a one-out RBI single by Willson Contreras in the first. Sugano then found himself backed into a corner: one out with the bases loaded. He walked back to the dugout two batters later unscathed.

Nootbaar’s two-run home run in the second dug Baltimore into a three-run hole, pacing Sugano toward what would have been the 35-year-old rookie’s worst outing of the season.

He retired 11 of the next 12 batters he faced. As pitching coach Drew French put it recently, what makes Sugano so impressive is he can have a start like that and “he doesn’t need like, ‘Gimme five minutes. I need five minutes to get my life back together.’”

The steady right-hander was pulled after 5 1/3 innings, allowing season-high-tying eight hits with three strikeouts and three earned runs. Tuesday’s start ended a four-game streak of pitching into the sixth.

“The first two innings, the way it goes for Sugano, probably wasn’t ideal for us,” Mansolino said, “but he settled down, got us pretty deep into the game, probably more than what we were expecting at that point.”

What they’re saying

Mansolino on the Orioles’ offense falling short:

“Their pitching was good tonight. You look at the (Andre) Pallante guy and kind of what his fastball was doing — cutting it, sinking it, it had life, it was jumping, the big front arm. That was a tough at-bat, and the guys battled. They did a good job. It was a heck of a bullpen as well. As I watched the at-bats, it felt competitive, it felt good, it felt like we were in it. A couple big hits here or there and it might’ve been a different story, but I appreciate the effort and the battle.”

By the numbers

The Orioles had chances to push more traffic around the base path but couldn’t. With two outs and two on in the third, Gunnar Henderson grounded out. Later, with the bases loaded, Mateo struck out, Heston Kjerstad grounded into a force out and catcher Chadwick Tromp flew out. Ryan Mountcastle had two one with one out, only to be sent down on strikes.

All told, the Orioles left eight runners on base. They were 1-for-14 with runners in scoring position — a stat that has haunted this offense now 50-plus games into the season.

On deck

The Orioles’ winning streak comes to a screeching halt at three. Their rubber match with St. Louis is at 6:35 p.m. Wednesday night, pitting left-handed starter Cade Povich against righty Miles Mikolas.

Around the horn

Catcher Adley Rutschman (head) was scheduled to take batting practice pregame, according to Mansolino. That plan was scratched because of the weather.

• Center fielder Cedric Mullins was out of the lineup for the second straight day because the doubleheader and day game in Boston “banged him up,” Mansolino said, but he was available off the bench.

Tuesday night was Japanese Heritage Night, one of four heritage nights on the Orioles’ themes calendar. The national anthem was performed by Yuriko Gandolfo and Lynne Homann Cure from the University of Maryland’s Koto Ensemble.

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