The St Louis Cardinals claimed an early lead but were unable to build on it, dropping the four-game series with the Chicago Cubs on Sunday night 6-2 at Wrigley Field.

The Cardinals were limited to four hits and went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position, as both runs came off a Masyn Winn home run in the third inning. Justin Steele recovered from that hiccup to allow just three hits and two walks while striking out six in 6.2 innings of work in the winning effort. Meanwhile, Cardinals starter Miles Mikolas allowed the tying run to score in the fourth on a balk, and the go-ahead RBI single from Michael Busch with no outs in the fifth, taking the loss with four earned runs, eight hits and two walks while fanning three. Relievers John King and Ryan Fernandez gave up solo home runs in the sixth.

Having dropped three out of four games to their archrivals, the Cardinals are now three games behind Arizona in the wild card race and 5.5 games behind Milwaukee in the NL Central, sitting at 57-55. The Cardinals return to Busch Stadium on Monday evening for a make-up game against a fellow wild card contender, the New York Mets. First pitch is at 4:15 p.m.