MILWAUKEE -- Freddy Peralta’s return to the Brewers’ rotation went nothing like he’d hoped in a 15-4 loss to the Cardinals on Friday night at American Family Field. But he was healthy.

Brewers pitching coach Chris Hook is confident that performance will follow.

“It takes a little bit of time to get back in the flow of things,” Hook said on the eve of Peralta’s return from a bout of right shoulder inflammation. “[Adrian] Houser was frustrated the other day. I told him, ‘This is not plug and play. You guys were in a good routine. It’s very detailed every day, and you go away for two weeks and you expect it to just work?’ It doesn’t work that way.”

Peralta threw 53 pitches and was charged with four runs on three hits, two walks and a hit batsman in two stressful innings of his first outing since Aug. 18 at St. Louis, when he departed with what Brewers manager Craig Counsell called a “scratchy” shoulder. Peralta landed on the 10-day injured list the next day and had spent the past two weeks strengthening his shoulder and core for the stretch run.

Ageless St. Louis starter Adam Wainwright, meanwhile, carried a shutout bid into the seventh inning in his first outing since turning 40, while pairing with catcher Yadier Molina as the fourth Major League batterymates to start 300 games together. Wainwright extended a scoreless streak to 24 consecutive innings before the Brewers finally broke through in the seventh.

The Cardinals have won Wainwright’s last nine starts in Milwaukee.

“Look, Adam Wainwright is pitching at a really high level at the age of 40. That’s amazing,” Counsell said. “It really is. It’s a credit to him and his greatness that he’s able to still pitch at this level at this age. It’s very, very rare and it’s to be respected.”

Peralta entered the night aiming to spoil the milestone for St. Louis, and he was one strike away from a scoreless first inning when Nolan Arenado hit an up-and-away fastball for a sky-high, two-run home run -- the first of Arenado’s two home runs in the game.

In Peralta’s second inning, a hit batsman and a walk started the Cardinals’ rally that turned into two more runs on a Wainwright single and Tommy Edman’s run-scoring groundout.

“If we come out of the first inning with a zero, it’s different,” Peralta said. “But [Arenado] is a great hitter. I wasn’t expecting that he was going to be ready for that one. I executed. That’s the pitch that we wanted. But he’s a great hitter.”

“There were no issues with how [Peralta] felt or how it looked from our side as far as how the ball was coming out of his hand or his big velocity,” Counsell said. “No restriction at all. That part of it, he felt good. But he was rusty. He was rusty and didn't execute everything.”

Bigger problems lay ahead.

Relievers Justin Topa (right elbow discomfort) and Daniel Norris (cut on left hand) departed the mound with athletic trainers, a particularly bad sign for Topa, considering he has twice undergone Tommy John surgery and missed most of his season with a flexor injury in the same elbow. He’ll be placed on the injured list, Counsell indicated.

Christian Yelich also exited early, although he was healthy. The Brewers opted to remove Yelich from the game after four innings when they were in an 8-0 deficit, moments after Yelich was called out on strikes on a pitch that looked significantly inside. An inning later, when Lorenzo Cain was called out on what the Brewers saw as a dubious check swing, Yelich shared his views from the dugout rail and was ejected.

All the while, the Cardinals kept adding to their advantage. Including Arenado’s home runs off Peralta and Topa (who also yielded Harrison Bader’s three-run shot) and Yadier Molina’s ninth-inning grand slam, the Brewers surrendered at least six home runs in a nine-inning game for only the 18th time in franchise history.

It took a couple of runs in the bottom of the ninth to spare the Brewers, who entered that half-inning in a 15-2 deficit, a tie for their most lopsided loss to the Cardinals. Twice in 2003, they lost by 13-run margins to St. Louis.

The Brewers took away two positives.

Rookie left-hander Aaron Ashby delivered more dazzling stuff over a 4 1/3-inning outing, marred only by Tyler O’Neill’s two-run homer. And, there was Peralta’s good health.

“I have been feeling really good the last couple of days, and I expected to feel good the first time coming back again,” Peralta said. “I was feeling good in the game, too. It’s what I was hoping from tonight.

“I want to be successful, but when those [lopsided games] come, there’s nothing I can do about it. I did my best.”