When is a dud game the Cardinals once flushed a chance for this 'youngry' crew to learn?

There was a time – not too long ago on the calendar, but dog years in the standings – when the Cardinals stumbled out of a misspent series in Pittsburgh and into Wrigley Field talking about how a few poor losses needed to be “flushed” or how they “just had to flush” a particularly putrid game.

The verb, past or present, is shorthand for forget.

Don’t fixate.

Move on.

Long season. Clunkers happen. Don’t look back. Turn the handle. Flush.

A dud of a game when a depleted lineup fails to produce a hit until the fifth inning and the pitchers allow 18 hits by the end of the eighth has all the makings of a flushable evening, and yet there were the Cardinals on Friday after their 8-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants going not so fast. A team at a different spot in the standings might “flush”