ST. LOUIS — Padres manager Craig Stammen reflected Tuesday afternoon on what had happened the night before when his team got one hit, walked once and were shut out by Dustin May.

“Every game, no matter how it goes, you put it behind you,” Stammen said. “But you’ve got to try to learn from it some way or another — good or bad. And there’s ways we can take something from yesterday. I don’t know what it is exactly, but we can take something from it, because we’re gonna face pitchers like that when they’re on. And we’ve gotta find a way to battle. … If it’s the playoffs or a game that we need to win, we’ve gotta find a way to be a little bit more able to scratch runs across.”

A few hours later, the Padres eventually did start hitting.

But not a lot.

Another languid game at the plate and Michael King struggling again on the mound doomed the Padres to a 3-2 loss to the Cardinals.

One night after May retired the first 18 Padres batters he faced, Andrew Pallante set down 14 in a row to start Tuesday’s game.

The Padres got their first hit with two outs in the fifth inning because a ball caromed off Pallante’s glove and because Samad Taylor is exceptionally fast. That is also why they got their first run.

Ty France followed Taylor’s infield single, which survived a replay review,  with a single lined to center field that easily scored Taylor.

That cut the Cardinals’ lead in half.

But King, who threw 86 pitches getting through four innings, hit Iván Herrera to start the fifth and ended his day by surrendering a single to Alec Burleson.

Yuki Matsui inherited runners at the corners and could not get out of the inning before Lars Nootbar hit a sacrifice fly to increase the Cardinals’ lead.

That run ended up being the difference, because the Padres kept hitting in the sixth. Again, just a little.

With two outs, Fernando Tatis Jr. grounded a ball through the right side, and Jackson Merrill drove him home with a double off the base of the wall in right-center field.

The inning ended with Manny Machado thinking he had walked.

But his apparent check swing on a full-count pitch was ruled by home plate umpire Nic Lentz to have been a swing. Machado had tossed his bat and was focused on taking off his protective gear and preparing to head to first base, so he did not realize he had been called out.

Once he looked up and saw the Cardinals were walking off the field, a discussion with Lentz briefly turned heated before Machado was escorted away by first base coach David Macias.

The Padres did not reach base again until they were down to their final out.

Pallante got through the seventh by getting his fifth and sixth strikeouts and his 11th groundball out. Ryne Stanek worked a 1-2-3 eighth. Riley O’Brien walked Machado with two outs in the ninth before Xander Bogaerts groounded out.

Tuesday was the fifth straight start in which King allowed at least three runs after he did so in just two of his first 10 starts.  It was the second time in five starts he failed to finish five innings after going at least that long in all of his first 10 starts.