TORONTO — Their lineup held quiet through their previous 15 games entering Saturday, the Cardinals found some of the stringy offense that evaded them through the back half of July.

What they couldn’t find, however, were enough runs to come away with a win over the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.

The Cardinals produced 11 hits to the Blue Jays' nine. They had hits from eight of the nine batters in their starting lineup and four separate innings where they had multiple runners on base but were outscored in a 5-1 loss on an afternoon when pitching prospect Quinn Mathews pitched five innings and allowed two runs in his big league debut.

Cardinals hitters tallied nine hits and drew one walk in 5 2/3 innings against Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman. The only run they could push across against Gausman and the four relievers that followed was in the sixth inning on a double by Masyn Winn.

Mathews kept the Cardinals close to Toronto as he allowed two runs while working around six hits and three walks on 97 pitches. He recorded three strikeouts, the first of which came in the first inning against Kazuma Okamoto. The lefty worked through traffic in the third and fourth innings and allowed one run apiece in each frame.

The first run Mathews allowed came on a sharp single George Springer hit up the middle with two outs in the third inning. An inning later, Mathews had runners reach second and third base with no outs. He managed to limit the damage to a run on a sacrifice fly by Luis Urias.

The Cardinals were within one run of the Blue Jays when Mathews departed. That deficit grew to four runs after fellow rookie Luis Gastelum was charged with three runs in 1 1/3 innings.

Hard contact the second time through

Mathews was able to keep the first eight Blue Jays hitters he faced to one hit and a walk to get through his first two big league innings without allowing a run. His second time facing Blue Jays hitters came with some trouble and hard contact from some of their veteran bats.

Mathews opened the third inning with a walk to No. 9 hitter Davis Schneider and got leadoff hitter Urias to line out. The line out brought up Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who produced one of the two sharp singles in the inning that helped the Blue Jays to a run.

With one out and a runner on first base, Mathews welcomed the Blue Jays star first baseman with a 95.7-mph fastball that went for a called strike. He went to his fastball again and saw it hit to right field with a 99.3 mph exit velocity that gave the Blue Jays their first runner in scoring position.

The lefty inched his way closer to exiting the inning by getting Okamoto to hit a sharp fly out to left field for the second out but couldn’t fully calm the situation when the veteran slugger Springer stepped up to the plate.

Springer, who had grounded out in the first inning, took two pitches off the plate. He saw a change-up clip the edge of the strike zone before receiving a slider and grounding it 107.7 mph up the middle for a single. Springer’s single, which Winn got a glove on but could not field cleanly, was the third hard-hit ball Mathews allowed up that point.

All three came in the third inning.

Starting and stalling

After being kept to one run on Friday, the Cardinals found ways to get on base Saturday against Gausman. They just had trouble getting guys over.

The Cardinals had two-out singles in the first and second innings but could not advance the base runner in each instance beyond first base. In the third, they totaled three singles but had the first of the three negated by a double play and the other two go to waste on an inning-ending groundout. And in the fourth, they tallied two more singles off Gausman and ended that inning with runners remaining on first and second base.

It wasn’t until a pair of extra-base hits in the sixth inning got them on the scoreboard against Toronto’s righty. That breakthrough came in the sixth inning.

Some slug got them there.

The Cardinals’ eighth hit of the afternoon came in the form of their first extra-base hit of the game. Ivan Herrera doubled to end a six-pitch at-bat against Gausman. Five pitches and one out later, he scored on a double Masyn Winn hit on the first pitch he saw from the righty.

The pair of extra-base hits were the only two hits the Cardinals produced in that inning.

Mathews calms fourth inning

Faced with another stressful inning in his first big league start, Mathews managed to keep the Blue Jays to one run in a fourth inning that began with runners on second and third base and no outs.

Mathews found himself in that situation after giving up a single to Ernie Clement and seeing Myles Straw double on a fly ball Nathan Church nearly made a diving play on.

On Straw’s double, Church raced to the warning track and made a leaping effort of the fly ball Straw hit with a runner on second base. It looked as if the ball had landed in Church’s glove, but upon him landing on the warning track, it popped out and rolled toward the wall for a double that kept Clement from scoring since he paused on the bases with Church’s dive attempt.

A strikeout and a pair of flyouts helped Mathews limit the damage.

Mathews used four pitches to get Schneider to strike out on a foul tip of his curveball. He offered an 0-0 change-up to Urias, which induced a flyout deep enough for Clement to tag up and score from third base and for Straw to advance to third base. And Mathews got Guerrero to fly out to end the inning.

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