ST. LOUIS -- The Giants’ season-long struggles to hold runners reached a new low on Sunday afternoon at Busch Stadium.

The Cardinals went 4-for-4 in stolen-base attempts in a 5-3 loss for the Giants that sealed a three-game sweep, with St. Louis catcher Pedro Pagés even getting into the mix with his first career steal in the bottom of the second inning.

After reaching on a one-out single off San Francisco starter Logan Webb, Pagés easily took off for second base, sliding in well ahead of Patrick Bailey's throw to Thairo Estrada. The extra base came back to haunt Webb, as Pagés went on to score from second on Alec Burleson’s two-out RBI single to stake the Cardinals to a 4-0 lead.

“I’m just not good at it,” said Webb, who was charged with the loss after giving up four runs on nine hits over six innings. “I’ve got to get better at it. I think I’ve just got no rhythm. I’ve changed my taps. I let a catcher steal on me today. It’s just bad. Not good.”

Bailey is tied for second in the Majors with an average pop time of 1.86 seconds, but Giants pitchers haven’t given him much of a chance to throw out runners this year. San Francisco has surrendered an MLB-high 86 steals while swiping only 25 bags of its own, resulting in by far the worst stolen-base differential (-61) in the league.

Webb has allowed 14 stolen bases in 2024, the second-most in the Majors behind the Orioles’ Corbin Burnes (21), though manager Bob Melvin suggested the Cardinals may have identified a tic in his delivery that allowed them to get big leads on Sunday.

“We have to be better about it,” Melvin said. “Part of that is throwing over and putting in slide steps. You have to balance the enormity of a particular pitch versus [wanting] a guy to be a little bit quicker. There’s a lot to it. But we definitely have to be better about it. That’s been one of our deficiencies, for sure.”

The Giants’ shortcomings go beyond their inability to control the running game, though. With Sunday’s loss, they’ve now dropped five in a row to fall a season-high-matching six games under .500 (36-42) and slide 3 1/2 games out of the NL Wild Card picture. They opened this six-game road trip with a dramatic comeback win against the Cubs at Wrigley Field on Monday, but they haven’t won since, leaving them with the third-worst record in the NL behind only the Marlins (27-50) and Rockies (27-51).

“There should be a sense of urgency,” Webb said. “I think that falls on all of us. We’ve just got to be better. It’s not very good.”

The Cardinals forced Webb to throw 29 pitches in the first inning, jumping out to a 3-0 lead behind RBI hits from Burleson, Brendan Donovan and Matt Carpenter. The Giants’ bats, meanwhile, couldn’t get anything going against veteran right-hander Sonny Gray, who carried a perfect game bid into the seventh inning.

Gray retired the first 20 batters he faced on 73 pitches before surrendering a two-out solo home run to Bailey. The 25-year-old backstop yanked an 0-1 cutter down the right-field line for his sixth blast of the year, giving the Giants their first hit of the game.

The Giants continued to threaten after Gray exited the game, with Wilmer Flores delivering a pinch-hit RBI double and Austin Slater lifting a sacrifice fly to cut the deficit to one in the eighth. Still, San Francisco’s rally fell short after old friend Brandon Crawford -- making only his second career start at third base -- fielded Heliot Ramos’ bouncer down the third-base line and narrowly beat Flores to the bag for the third and final out of the inning.

“We fought hard there at the end,” Melvin said. “It didn’t look good for a while. For a while, it felt as bad as any game we had played this year. And then all of a sudden we’re within striking distance. We continue to fight, but we’re just coming up short. It’s frustrating.”