PITTSBURGH -- The Pirates got another good start from JT Brubaker on Friday night, but they also had some bad reads and some tough luck.

The little issues began from the get-go for the Pirates, as they dropped their series opener to the Cardinals, 7-3. But the little things accumulated, and it turned into a deficit too large to overcome.

• Box score

“We've played well,” manager Derek Shelton said, “and tonight, we just didn't play very well."

The first hit of the game was skied at a 45-degree launch angle by Dylan Carlson that carried and carried before scraping off the top of the Clemente Wall. Two batters later, Nolan Arenado sent a weak blooper to left field, just past where the light split to shade, and new Pirates outfielder Ka’ai Tom was unable to come up with a diving attempt to save a run.

The second iteration of weird baseball on Friday night came in the form of a miscommunication. Tommy Edman led off the third inning with a single, but Brubaker fought back to strike out Carlson and Paul Goldschmidt. It appeared he had induced the third out as well when Arenado sent a towering pop fly to shallow left field.

However, shortstop Kevin Newman drifted back for the ball, and as the ball was falling, he held his hands up as if to signal he couldn’t track the ball. With Tom not charging in to claim the putout, the ball dropped in for a double, and Edman sprinted home from first base for the Cardinals’ second run.

“I thought I could get there, and it ended up being 10 or 15 feet more behind me than I thought,” Newman said. “You know, we talked about it, it's unfortunate but kind of just one of those baseball plays, and we do everything we can to not let that happen again.”

The Pirates gave themselves opportunities to cut back into the deficit. Tom, who has drawn four walks in his first five plate appearances in Pittsburgh, walked to lead off the third inning, and Brubaker put down a well-executed sacrifice bunt down the first-base line, but Tom took an overly aggressive turn around second. The throw to second base was well in time to nab Tom before Adam Frazier singled -- now with the bases empty.

"I think he just got a little aggressive because Nolan vacated, and Goldy made a nice play on it,” Shelton said.

Though neither the fielding blunder nor the baserunning gaffe showed up as an error in the scorebook, they are part of the mistakes the Pirates have made strides to phase out after the club committed 47 errors in 60 games last season, which was the second-worst mark in the Majors.

The mistakes and bad luck were particularly unfortunate given the start Brubaker turned in. The strongest arm in the Pirates’ starting rotation to begin the season, Brubaker drew a career-best 20 swings and misses in his five-inning start. However, the wind and the woes led to two of the three runs on his line, while the other came from a hanging slider to Tyler O’Neill that was crushed for a solo home run.

With the gusts, Brubaker knew he had to limit launch angles, as he has all season with a 58.6% ground-ball rate entering Friday. He induced four ground-ball outs and three low line-drive outs to get the defense moving comfortably. Seven strikeouts -- one shy of his season high -- helped the cause.

“It was swirling. It’s tough to catch a fly ball,” Brubaker said. “Just tried to make sure I keep the ball on the ground and work down in the zone and work up when I need to was really just the mindset.”

Perhaps a cleaner beginning to the game wouldn’t have made much difference. The Cardinals broke the game open with Matt Carpenter’s pinch-hit three-run homer -- his second in a two-game span -- in the sixth off Duane Underwood Jr., a regular bullpen option for the Pirates in high-leverage, middle-inning situations.

But in order to set themselves up to win games the way they expect to win games -- grinding out at-bats and finding success with situational hitting behind strong pitching -- the Pirates are going to have to minimize mental mistakes as much as possible and bounce back from performances like Friday night.

“We have been playing really well and doing really well in those aspects, so that's something we pride ourselves on,” Newman said. “We'll flush tonight and come back and continue to play how we've been playing the last couple of weeks.”