MILWAUKEE -- For eight innings, the St. Louis Cardinals flailed at an assortment of 89 mph fastballs and 78 mph changeups from a pitcher, Zach Davies, who woke up that morning with a 6.05 ERA. The Cardinals never once advanced a runner safely to second base.

Then, Brandon Moss stepped into the batter's box after watching all that from the comfort of the bench to face a pitcher with a 97 mph fastball and wipeout curveball, Milwaukee Brewers closer Jeremy Jeffress. The result was a home run, which makes no sense and somehow makes perfect sense.

The juxtaposition of the lack of success against the soft-tossing, struggling starter and the success against the dominant closer -- the sheer illogic of it -- has been a defining characteristic of this Cardinals' offense all season. Moss' home run in the ninth inning of the Cardinals' 3-1 loss to the Brewers was the team's 10th pinch-hit home run of the season, tying a franchise record (for an entire season) on the 54th game.

Brandon Moss' home run in the ninth inning on Wednesday tied the team record for pinch-hit home runs in a season. Benny Sieu/USA TODAY Sports

In the past eight games alone, the Cardinals have done surprisingly well against the likes of Jake Arrieta, Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg and then looked out of sorts against Davies, which prompted the question to manager Mike Matheny: Is this team better off facing power pitchers than finesse guys?

"He made good pitches. The stuff was good even if the numbers might not show it," Matheny said of Davies. "He didn't make a whole lot of mistakes today. He was in the bottom of the zone, he did not give up much in the middle and that plus changeup was very, very good. When you're having that kind of day, it's going to make any lineup have a rough way to go."

There are still 11 major league teams that have yet to hit their first pinch-hit home run this season while the Cardinals are doing record-breaking things off the bench. Through 54 games last season, they had hit 40 home runs as a team, just four times more than their pinch hitters alone have managed in 2016. It's really not that easy.

The Cardinals thought they had good depth, with Moss, Matt Adams, Kolten Wong, Jedd Gyorko and others often available to pinch hit many days. They probably didn't expect this kind of production, however.

Moss often does his damage against fastballs, even good ones, and that could explain, in part, why he and the other Cardinals pinch hitters have thrived this season late in games.

"It's never easy to face closers and pinch hitting is hard anyway, but when you're facing closers and starters late, at least they go after you," Moss said. "They're trying to get the out -- they're not trying to pitch around anybody and make you chase one pitch after another. It makes an at-bat a little bit more comfortable. You don't have any guesswork about what they're trying to do."

Other than the one at-bat, there wasn't a whole lot of encouragement the Cardinals could take from Wednesday, but they did get another decent outing from a starting pitcher. That turnaround has been the story of this road trip, which saw the Cardinals go 4-3 in Washington and Milwaukee. Jaime Garcia (4-5) forced Matheny to get the bullpen up twice in just five innings, but he managed to keep things from blowing up entirely after he allowed two runs on three hits and two walks in the first inning.

Garcia breezed through three of his five innings. Short outings were the bane of the team's existence on the last homestand and this one could have been a lot worse based on how it looked early. Matheny used Greg Garcia to pinch hit for Jaime Garcia in the sixth inning simply to try to generate something against Davies. It didn't work, but then again, neither did anything else.

"I was feeling better and better," Jaime Garcia said. "Obviously, they took me out right there. That's just part of the game."