The Cubs offense was stagnant most of Friday afternoon.

And when it looked like it had gotten the jolt it needed, the Wrigley Field winds wreaked havoc.

Trailing by a run in the bottom of the 8th, Patrick Wisdom crushed a 111-mph shot off his bat with a runner on base — only for the winds, which were blowing in at 11 mph at first pitch — to knock it down on the warning track and into the glove of left fielder Brendan Donovan. It was one of three fly balls by the Cubs that were hit well, only for the wind to turn them into outs.

“Just wild,” Patrick Wisdom said after the game. “I mean, it’s knowing that I did everything I could and once the ball left my bat it’s out of my control. And I did put a good at-bat together, swung at a pitch that I could do damage on and I hit it hard, it’s just it got caught.

“So I think knowing that, it’s obviously easier to kind of handle the frustration, but at the same time, knowing the situation, the circumstance and how it would have played out, it makes it hard to swallow.”

The Cardinals would add a pair of insurance runs in the top of the 9th en route to a 3-0 win in the series opener at Wrigley Field. It marks the second straight loss for the Cubs, who fall a season-low 4 games under .500. The Cubs have lost 6 of their last 8 contests.

“I mean, look, Patrick did his job,” manager Craig Counsell said. “You hit a ball really good, you can’t do anything different than that. You do your job. And I think Patrick did what he was supposed to do. He swung at the right pitch, put a great swing on it, hit the ball the way he wanted to do. That’s what he can control. And that’s just what it is. That’s the way it is.”

As Wisdom mentioned, the flyout feels like a tougher blow given the circumstances the Cubs are facing. But Counsell tried to look at it as a sign that the Cubs are still on the right path.

“Look, when you’re losing, it looks like you’re doing nothing right,” Counsell said. “And we’re doing more right than you think. And that’s why you continue to stay positive about it. So there’s nothing any of us can do about that. Those are the conditions.

“We don’t get to control that stuff. Patrick did his job and it’s just unfortunate.”

The Cubs’ scuffling offense had no answer for Cardinals starter Kyle Gibson. The soft-tossing righty allowed just 2 hits — a leadoff single to Mike Tauchman in the 1st and another single to Miguel Amaya in the 3rd — while racking up 6 strikeouts and 1 walk. Over their last two games, the Cubs have tallied just 6 hits. Since sweeping the White Sox last weekend, the Cubs haven’t scored more than 4 runs in any of the 8 games and are hitting .213 as a team in that span.

The offensive struggles overshadowed a brilliant pitching performance by Kyle Hendricks. After Jordan Wicks was forced to exit the game with an oblique injury in the 2nd inning, the veteran turned in 4.1 shutout innings in relief, allowing just 2 hits with a strikeout. Hendricks retired the first 11 hitters he faced in his best outing of the year.

Luke Little pitched a scoreless 7th, turning it over to Hayden Wesneski. The righty allowed a home run to the first hitter he faced — catcher Pedro Pages, his first career long ball.

Still, the Cubs showed life. Michael Busch led the bottom of the frame with a single to right field. Counsell turned to Pete Crow-Armstrong to pinch run for him. The speedy outfielder swiped second base and then advanced to third on a groundout by Dansby Swanson.

Running on a contact play, Crow-Armstrong was nabbed at the plate a batter later when Amaya hit a grounder to second. With the Cardinals turning to lefty JoJo Romero, Counsell turned to Wisdom to pinch hit for Tauchman. Wisdom belted a deep fly ball that led to a roar from the 40,160 at Wrigley Field, only for the roars to turn to silence moments later when the ball nestled safely into Donovan’s glove.

“The cliche saying [is], ‘hey that’s baseball,’” Wisdom said. “[You] do everything right, hit the ball on the nose and don’t get results for it, but it’s kind of what happens sometimes. But that’s a tough one to swallow, especially given the situation late in the game and game deciding it would have been. But who knows how it would have played out.”

Trailing by 3 in the 9th, the Cubs drew two straight, two-out walks to bring the tying runner to the plate, but Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley struck out Nico Hoerner to hand the Cubs another painful loss.