MILWAUKEE — You know the Milwaukee Brewers are in a hitting slump when the No. 1 topic of discussion before the game is Prince Fielder's eating habits.

The consensus reached during that meaty pregame discussion?

Fielder, the slugger who has hit only one home run in his first 20 games after becoming the world's largest vegetarian in February, doesn't need a porterhouse as much as he needs patience and warm weather.

And the Brewers, whose six-pack of young core players entered Tuesday's game with a combined .219 batting average, didn't need to pound the panic button as much as they needed a breakout offensive game to get back on track.

Milwaukee finally got its breakout game Tuesday, a 9-8 victory over St. Louis in 12 innings at Miller Park. And though Fielder didn't hit a home run, he went 3-for-3 and, for a change, consistently drove the ball.

Was this the game the Brewers needed to revive a group of young hitters who appeared to be pressing the previous two weeks?

"I think it's real good for us," infielder Rickie Weeks said of the 15-hit explosion. "We have been struggling, but ... I don't think it's going to last for too long. The team's going to hit."

Funny, that's what manager Ned Yost said before the game.

"It'll come," he said. "This is a good offensive team."

It sure wasn't playing like one before Tuesday. Indeed, the Brewers had scored more than five runs in a game only once in their previous 13 contests.

Fielder, Weeks, J.J. Hardy and Bill Hall were hitting .215 or lower. Yost, who is no worrywart, insisted it's just the nature of the game for hitters and teams to experience peaks and valleys.

"You can go for a week and just think you're never going to get another hit and then all of a sudden you don't ever think you're going to make an out," he said. "You just take it for what it is, day by day. The thing that you look at for the most part is, are the players on your team still positive with themselves and with their teammates? What's their focus? What's their intensity like? Are they feeling sorry for themselves? There's none of that here, so there's no worries."

Which is why Yost won't panic over a team-wide slump, nor will he order Fielder to dive into a slab of ribs anytime soon in an attempt to end his power shortage.

"Whatever he does is right for him," Yost said. "It's his business. As much as ... everybody wants to make a big deal out of a young man trying to eat healthy, it doesn't have anything to do with it. You can grease up all you want, it's not going to help you hit home runs."

The best part of all this is that the Brewers kept pace in the standings even without hot bats.

Although the bullpen and defense have started to show signs of cracking under the pressure, the Brewers still emerged from Tuesday's game with a 12-8 record.

"That's the biggest thing about our team right now," Weeks said. "We haven't hit the ball, but we're finding ways to win games. We're hitting pretty good with runners in scoring position when we have it and we're having fun doing it. It's only going to be that much better when we start hitting."

Hopefully, that time is now.

Contact Tom Oates at toates@madison.com or 608-252-6172.