PHILADELPHIA _ A wild pitch that got past the Phillies catcher gave the Cardinals a chance to tie the game in the ninth inning.
A line drive that got past a diving Marcell Ozuna allowed the Phillies to win it in the 10th.
Aaron Altherr drilled a two-run single to left field that gave the Phillies a 6-5 victory Monday night at Citizen Bank Park. The winning run was only on base because the Cardinals opted to walk Carlos Santana with one out and give reliever Matt Bowman a chance to get the game-ending double play. Instead, Altherr struck a line drive that Ozuna attempted to catch with a dive. He didn't land it.
The ball got past him to the wall and that meant Santana could score from first and slide home as the winner.
Three of the Cardinals' runs came on homers, including Tommy Pham's 10th inning shot that put the Cardinals ahead and gave Bowman a lead to save.
The Cardinals struck out a season-high 19 times.
Leave it to the Cardinals to find a way to turn one of those strikeouts into a game-tying rally.
The Cardinals got two home runs _ as their first two hits _ and then undermined their offense with 18 strikeouts. But No. 18 wasn't caught _ slipping by Phillies catcher Andrew Knapp. Instead of becoming the final out of the game, that wild pitch meant that the Cardinals got a run in and a mulligan.
Given an gift at-bat, Kolten Wong delivered with a single to tie the game, and that forced it into extra innings.
Tommy Pham gave the Cardinals their first lead off the game in the 10th with a solo homer that leapfrogged the Phillies and led the Cardinals to a 5-4 lead. It didn't last.
In the eighth and ninth inning the Cardinals got runners into scoring position and the tying run to second base. They had four at-bats with a chance to tie the game with a single. They struck out in all four of those at-bats _ getting the wild pitch and a run only when Yairo Munoz raced to first to keep the inning going.
The tying run got to third base on what could have been a final out.
The Phillies brought in lefty Adam Morgan to face Wong, a pinch-hitter. Wong, who has had a knack for timing this season with two walk-off home runs tied the game with a two-strike single.
The late-game rally scarred what was a superb outing by Phillies start Nick Pivetta. The right-hander struck out a career-best 13 in his 7 1/3 innings. And for most of that outing he held the Cardinals to two hits. Both were solo homers. Matt Carpenter hit his 11th in the third inning for the Cardinals' first run, and Yadier Molina capped his record night with a solo homer in the seventh.
Molina set the major-league record for games caught with the same team when he reached 1,757 with Monday's outing.
All four runs Miles Mikolas allowed came in the first inning, and three of them scored before Mikolas got his first out of the game.
The Phillies, who have the best home record in the National League, seized on the right-hander with a single, a walk, and a home run by the time Mikolas threw his 15th pitch of the game. He didn't get an out until the 25th pitch of his start, and then with two outs he allowed an RBI single to boost the Phillies to a 4-0 lead.
There it stood.
After a leadoff double by the No. 9 hitter in the second inning, Mikolas retired the next 11 batters he faced to get the Cardinals into the fifth inning with a deficit they could at least chew into. They did with homers.
The Cardinals did not get their first base hit that wasn't a home run into the eighth inning when Greg Garcia lifted a pinch-hit single to left-center field. Carpenter followed with a double that knocked two Phillies out of the game. Starter Pivetta would be relieved, and right fielder Nick Williams had to be removed because he took Carpenter's double off his nose and bloodied his face.
Carpenter's double gave the Cardinals their first at-bats with runners in scoring position _ and they did with them what's become a habit.
They struck out.
This season, the Cardinals have had 12 games with at least 12 strikeouts, and going into the ninth inning Monday they tied their season-high with 15 strikeouts. Thirteen of them belonged to starter Pivetta. Reliever Edubray Ramos struck out Tommy Pham and Jose Martinez in the eighth inning with the tying run at second base to keep the Phillies' lead in place.
