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Hours before every game, the starters in the Cardinals rotation meet for a few minutes around their stretch to chat, to challenge each other, and in Pittsburgh, they didn’t need that much time at all.

With most of their ERAs still swollen and bruised by a visit to Boston’s Fenway Park, the rotation huddled the next day in Pittsburgh to agree on what Erick Fedde recalled was a brief, succinct and pointed message.

“Hey guys,� he repeated. “We’re better than this.�

The turnaround that began with Fedde’s six no-hit innings against the Pirates completed its first lap of the rotation with another quality start from the right-hander Tuesday night. Fedde limited the Houston Astros to one run through six sturdy innings, only to be outdueled by Houston Astros right-hander Hunter Brown, whose high-octane sinker bulldozed the Cardinals in a 2-0 victory at Busch Stadium. Fedde’s third quality start of the season was the third consecutive for the rotation and fifth in their past six games. They had only two in the first 11 games.

Hey guys, they are better than that.

“Like most things — hitting, winning, pitching well — it’s contagious,� Fedde said late Tuesday night. “We’re challenging ourselves. We want to do as good as the next guy, if not better. That Boston series was really tough on us. We kind of had our powwow and said, ‘We’ve got to be better than this.’ We said we were going to have the best five rotation (of games) that we could before Sonny (Gray’s) last start. We had a really good five. And we’re trying to do it again.�

The timing of the “good five� is both fortuitous and not at all coincidental.

The Cardinals upshifted Wednesday to a six-man rotation with the addition of Steven Matz to the mix for at least the next week. At the same time, the Cardinals are starting to loosen some of the conservative pitch counts they placed as a governor or starters to begin the season. Fedde was removed after six no-hit innings in Pittsburgh in large part because he needed 88 pitches to get 18 outs, was not going to be able to finish the ninth and was the first pitcher to go on four days of rest. But he went 96 pitches Tuesday.

The Cardinals starter has thrown more than 90 pitches in three of the past five starts, and with quantity and quality, they’ve pitched deeper into games.

“They can get to where they need to,� manager Oliver Marmol said. “They’ve all done their job this time through.�

During the chilly, misspent weekend at Fenway Park, the Cardinals starters allowed 17 runs in 10 innings. Not one of the three starters got within an out of finishing the fifth inning. The gnarliest of the games was the 18-7 loss on ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball.� But Fedde’s start was not without welts. The right-hander pitched the home opener at Fenway, and in three innings, he allowed six runs on five hits. He walked four.

His sinker misbehaved.

His pitches lacked familiar movement.

His between-start task was clear.

“I put myself in a big hole in Boston in the sense of personal stats and numbers,� Fedde said. “You know you’ve got to come to the ballpark and put up some good starts. Those are really important for me and important for the team. I want to continue to build off of that.�

Fedde and pitching coach Dusty Blake traced a few issues and the lack of movement on his pitches back to mechanics and specifically the sweep of his right hand. As Fedde brought the ball around, the distance between his hand and head had widened — as if he was casting a fishing lure and didn’t want to get hooked, not like he was delivering a pitch and wanted it to hook.

Going into Tuesday’s start against the Astros and opposite Brown, Fedde focused on his non-pitching arm, or his glove side. His idea was to keep it bent and close to his body, and that doing that would also bring his pitching arm closer, too.

The sinker suggested it worked.

“And my heater was better than it’s been in a long time,� Fedde said. “You saw swings where guys looked uncomfortable, broken bats, (and) I even missed my spots and kept guys on the ground. Overall, my stuff felt much better.�

Fedde threw his sinker more than 50% of the time and got as many fouls and swings-and-misses on it combined (11) as he did balls in play (11). When the Astros loaded the bases against him in the second inning, he was able to use the sinker to setup an out and leave the bases still loaded as he walked off the mound. In the fourth, Fedde walked the No. 9 batter to load the bases again. To escape the inning he had to face former MVP and three-time batting champion Jose Altuve.

Fedde began the at-bat with a sinker.

He finished it with a sinker for a flyout.

And in the middle, he missed with two sweeping sliders, but he continued to find a way to use the breaking ball effectively even if he could not land it consistently for a strike.

“Just the way it was moving was better for him,� Marmol said. “He did not have a ton of feel for the slider early and started using it underneath the zone a little better as the game went on.�

Fedde struck out five total in his first three starts.

He struck out five in the first five innings Tuesday.

The right-hander’s evening ended with a liner right back at him that he was able to snare, flip and then toss to first base for a double play. Cam Smith drilled a cutter that left his bat at 99.9 mph. Fedde got a glove on it for the catch, but as he steadied himself to prove he caught the ball, the ball popped from his glove. Fedde maintained his footing to regrasp the ball and complete the throw to first base for the inning-ending double play on his 96th and final pitch.

“Pure reaction,� he said. “I think it hit my glove so hard it shot it around, hit the ground, popped up and that’s where I had to focus and make sure I finished the play. When I caught it I was so excited that I pointed at the ump, ‘Hey, I caught it. Make sure this is a double play here.’ I wanted to get out of the inning.�

Fedde’s fitting finale meant the Cardinals got at least five innings from the starter in seven consecutive starts leading into Matz’s first. The lefty will be limited to around 65 or 70 pitches, and the Cardinals could yet reshuffle the bullpen to provide some insurance innings if necessary. The bullpen, so winded coming out of Boston, has had the chance to breathe even with a few extra-inning games. Fedde steadied the Cardinals with six no-hit innings in an eventual loss in Pittsburgh. Andre Pallante one-upped him with seven in a win against Philadelphia.

Matthew Liberatore followed with a win to claim the series vs. the Phillies.

And then Gray, in the mile marker start the rotation targeted in Pittsburgh as the goal of the turnaround, pitched seven scoreless innings for the win Monday night.

Fedde followed with six.

Now it’s Matz’s first turn.

Hey guy, do better than this.

“I think (momentum) applies to all areas of the game,� Marmol said. “When you’re playing good defense, you’re inspired to create an identity around it. Same thing with the rotation. There’s a competition within the rotation be the next guy to throw up zeroes.�