ATLANTA -- There’s been a little bit of all, a bunch of nothing and not much between those extremes for the Cardinals, whose feast-or-famine offense skewed toward the latter for a second consecutive night at SunTrust Park.

Aside from a pair of solo homers, the offense came up empty during a 10-2 loss to the Braves on Thursday. The Cardinals, who had baseball’s best record on May 1, haven’t won a series since.

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“We have a reference point of what that [positive] result looks like,” manager Mike Shildt said after the club’s 11th loss in 14 games. “We’re not getting it right now. But the reality is, right now, no one is going to feel sorry for us. We’re not going to feel sorry for ourselves. We’re moving forward. That’s as simple as I can make it. We’re not going to get stuck in whatever this might be.”

The reasons for this May funk are plentiful, but the most glaring may be an offense that goes from collectively hot to all-around cold in inexplicable fashion. Consider that the Cardinals broke out for 14 runs in the opener of this three-game series only to score twice more in the final 18 innings. That came on the heels of a series during which St. Louis plated 17 runs one day and a combined two in a subsequent pair of losses.

All one day. Nothing (or close to it) the next.

“It’s been weird,” first baseman Paul Goldschmidt said. “I don’t really know if I have an answer. I think as a player you try to self-evaluate, individually and as a team. You’re always looking at ways to improve and ways to make adjustments. So it’s not just like, ‘Hey, everything is perfect.’ But you also don’t want to be too hard on yourself if some of this stuff that’s within your control you’re doing a decent job of.”

And there is some of that. The Cardinals continue to post a strong hard-hit rate, and they have collectively seen their walk rate tick up and their strikeout rate cut down from April to May.

Yet, a team that was held to two or fewer runs three times while racing out to a 20-10 start has been at or below that threshold eight times in the past 14 games. That includes four times over the past week.

“May has been weird for us,” said starter Adam Wainwright, whose five runs allowed over four innings put the Cards in an early hole Thursday. “We’ve not pitched how we can pitch, and we haven’t hit the ball the way we can hit. And when we did hit, it seems like it’s all in one big game. Month to month, you can see two totally different teams out there with the same guys.”

St. Louis’ runs on Thursday came via solo homers from Marcell Ozuna and Matt Carpenter. Ozuna’s blast snapped a 14-inning scoring drought for the club and came after the Cards had already fallen into a five-run deficit.

The Cardinals weren’t without other chances on Thursday against Braves starter Julio Teheran, but they had an early scoring opportunity snuffed out by a double play -- one of four the team grounded into during its two series losses -- and another squandered when Carpenter couldn’t capitalize with runners on second and third and two out in the fifth.

That was one of 10 times the Cardinals were hitless with runners in scoring position in these back-to-back losses.

Shildt hasn’t reacted hastily to his offense’s recent unpredictability. At least not yet. Thursday marked the 17th time this year -- and the ninth time in May -- that he’s utilized the same batting order. That’s notable continuity for a club that didn’t feature the same lineup more than nine times all of last season.

It will obviously look different this weekend when the Cardinals get to employ a designated hitter for the first time in 2019. But a more-sustained shakeup could also be coming.

If there are changes on tap, it’ll likely be regarding placement, not so much personnel. In particular, Carpenter’s grip on the leadoff spot seems to be loosening, especially with Dexter Fowler boasting an on-base percentage of .410. That’s nearly ninety points higher than Carpenter, who has two hits in his past 20 at-bats.

“It’s a fine line,” Shildt responded when answering a question about lineup construction. “I don’t want to keep running down a rabbit hole. Also, you look up and there’s similar lineups scoring 17 and 14 and 11 runs. I talk to people I trust. I talk to my staff. And you go, ‘Man, this is a good lineup. And these are guys taking good at-bats.’

“But you can’t run from the fact that we haven’t been as consistent as we’d like with the runs. It’s my job to always look for a way to make sure that happens.”