MILWAUKEE — Miami Marlins All-Star right-hander Max Meyer lasted just three innings and 74 pitches in an 8-6 loss to the Brewers at American Family Field, his shortest outing of the season after a career-long 10 days between starts.

The 27-year-old Meyer, who entered with a 9-1 record and 2.58 ERA, walked three batters and surrendered two runs as the Marlins’ plan to give him extended rest over the All-Star break backfired. Miami had skipped his last scheduled start and made him unavailable for the Midsummer Classic to manage his workload after he surpassed career highs for innings and starts at the major league level.

“I grinded through every single inning it felt like, put the ‘pen in a tough spot, especially coming off a break like this,” Meyer said. “Obviously, I wanted to go deeper. Pen’s got to pick up a lot of slack if I’m only going three innings and there’s a one-run game. So, it was tough. Obviously, not my best one. Clean up the walks and then get back on it.”

The numbers support the concern about extended rest. Meyer has posted a 4.91 ERA in eight starts on six days of rest, compared to 3.04 on regular four days’ rest and 4.61 with five. Until Saturday, he had never gone longer than six days without taking the mound in a big league game.

Marlins manager Clayton McCullough said the club remains committed to monitoring Meyer’s workload. “We are in uncharted territory with this, but also, we don’t have any concern as much as, we do the responsible thing is just to be aware and cognizant of we do have a young athlete that is and already has surpassed a number of career highs,” McCullough said. “We feel good about where he’s at right now, but I think we’ll go start to start or succession of starts, and continue to gauge with how things are going.”

Signs of rust appeared immediately. Meyer walked leadoff batter Christian Yelich on five pitches, then missed badly on consecutive offerings to Jackson Chourio. Handed a 3-0 lead in the second, Meyer gave up a run when Garrett Mitchell singled, Luis Lara walked, and Braden Shewmake hit a sacrifice fly. In the third, Chourio walked, stole second and scored on William Contreras’ RBI double. A fielding error by shortstop Otto Lopez and an infield hit Meyer failed to cover added to the chaos before pitching coach Daniel Moskos visited the mound.

Brewers manager Pat Murphy credited his club’s approach against Meyer. “Down 3-0 to a pitcher that’s 9-1 with a 2.58 ERA entering Saturday, that’s tough going right there, you know what I mean?” Murphy said. “But we got his pitch count up and got him out of there, little by little. Stole a bunch of bases and put pressure on them. It wasn’t pretty.”

Meyer’s early exit forced the bullpen to cover 18 outs. Cade Gibson and Tyler Zuber held the line, but Calvin Faucher surrendered four runs in the sixth to turn a 3-2 Marlins lead into a 6-3 deficit. Meyer also conceded he erred in requesting an ABS challenge on a pitch clearly above the zone. “Looking back at it, I’m not going to challenge,” Meyer said. “I should never challenge. … I’m never going to do that again.”

The Marlins have now dropped a season-high-tying five straight and will depend on Meyer, Sandy Alcantara and Eury Pérez to stay in contention while managing workloads for Meyer and Pérez because of their injury histories. “We all want to go out there, go six, seven innings every single time,” Meyer said. “I think we can do that moving forward. There’s a lot of highs and lows in the season, so nobody’s panicking in there.”