MILWAUKEE — When he could not end the game with his glove, Michael Siani seized control of it with his bat, and added a dash with his feet, for good measure.

An inning after what would have been his dazzling, diving catch in center to secure an extra-innings victory for the Cardinals, Siani drove in two runs, stole a base, and scored a run to lead the Cardinals to a 7-4 victory in the 12th inning against the Brewers on Tuesday night. Siani had the game in his glove in the 11th only to have the baseball jarred free and the game suddenly tied, again.

In the top of the 12th, Siani lined a single to left field for two RBIs that broke the 4-4 tie. He stole second, advanced on an error, and then scored on a sacrifice fly. That gave Ryan Helsley (7-4) a cushion to complete a win he initially entered to save.

What would have been a stunning catch to end the game instead became a riveting replay dilemma as the Cardinals and umpires looked to Manhattan for a ruling. With two outs in the 11th and the Cardinals’ holding a one-run lead, Willy Adames lined a ball to center field. Siani dove and made the catch – sort of.

He appeared to have control the ball and the win as he slid.

Both squirted away.

As Siani’s momentum twisted his glove, the ball came loose, and that turned Adames’ liner into a game-tying double. The Cardinals challenged the call on the field – likely arguing Siani had control of the ball – only to have it upheld by officials reviewing the video at MLB’s Manhattan offices.

Adames’ double was the Brewers’ only hit after the fifth inning.

Paul Goldschmidt fittingly delivered the Cardinals’ lead that Siani’s catch nearly secured. Goldschmidt’s September surge continued with three hits and three RBIs through 11 innings – including the RBI single in the top of the inning for a 4-3 lead that slipped away. That sent the game int the 12th having already been a duel of which bullpen would blink first.

Before the Brewers’ bullpen took over in the game and took over its half of the game, they had gone seven consecutive games without allowing an earned run. All-Star reliever Devin Williams, the game’s leading practitioner of the Airbender Changeup (patent pending), returned from injury in late July, and with him as its anchor Milwaukee has added relief to the number of things it does well.

Williams carried the tie game into the bottom of the ninth with a spotless inning. He struck out two Cardinals. In seven of his 13 appearances this season, he has at least two strikeouts.

His inning was the fourth consecutive scoreless by the bullpen vs. the Cardinals.

The Cardinals got two runners on base in the sixth and pulled off a double steal to get them into scoring position before the defense helped reliever Aaron Ashby slip free of that inning without allowing the go-ahead run.

As extra innings approached and arrived, the Cardinals’ bullpen echoed the Brewers, right down to Matthew Liberatore’s work in the bottom of the ninth. In one of his most compelling assignments yet, the young lefty and sometimes starter struck out cleanup hitter Gary Sanchez and retired all three Brewers he faced to force extra innings.

An exchange of bunts in the 10th inning did not yield an end to the game. After the Cardinals came up empty with their chances to bring home the go-ahead run, Liberatore defused the Brewers’ threat. He turned a comebacker into an out at home, and after intentionally walking leadoff hitter Jackson Chourio, Liberatore blitzed through Blake Perkins on three pitches to end the inning with the bases loaded and walk-off run 90 feet away.

Liberatore’s final pitch was a 97.5-mph fastball.

Goldschmidt broke the first tie of the game with a solo homer in the fourth inning that gave him two extra-base hits in his first two at-bats of the game and a 6 for 11 start to the month of September. With his single in the 11th he improved to 20 for 39 in his past 10 games.

The Brewers answered in the bottom of the first with a pair of doubles. No. 9 hitter Bryce Turang chased starter Steven Matz from the game with a two-out double. Matz had struck out seven Brewers through 4 2/3 innings but came that out shy of qualifying for the win – well, that out and that inherited runner. Brewers rookie Jackson Chourio doubled his RBIs for the game with a double off reliever Ryan Fernandez to knot the game, 3-3.

There it held tight all the way into bonus baseball.

Matz gets a whiff of starting

Reintroduced to the rotation with no publicly delivered promise of another start, Steven Matz did enough within a few innings to intrigue the Cardinals how he could be used next.

In his first major-league appearance since April 30 in Detroit, Matz came one out shy of completing five innings. Within that half of the ballgame, Matz struck out seven, including one stretch where he went through the middle of the Brewers’ lineup and struck out four consecutive. He struck out the side in the fourth inning, and five of his strikeouts came in the span of six batters looking at him for the second time in the game.

A day after the Brewers walked eight times, Matz got them swinging and looking.

He had 14 swings and misses on his 78 pitches.

“Just to see him back out there,” Marmol said of Matz’s return. “He’s healthy. I want to see him go out there with confidence and be on the attack.”

The only runs Milwaukee got against Matz while he was on the mound came in the third inning as a pair of solo homers intruded on the Cardinals’ lead. It would have been three solo homers had Rhys Hoskins’ homer in the second inning not been ruled a long foul ball upon further review. The next inning opened with a homer that did not need to be reviewed – Joey Ortiz’s 370-foot shot was clearly fair, and so was Chourio’s second homer in as many days. The Brewers’ rookie hit a grand slam in Monday’s win, and with his homer on Tuesday night the rising star has 18 homers and is closer and closer to having more homers than he is years old (20).

With the game-tying double, Chourio had six RBIs and three runs scored in the first 14 innings of the Cardinals visit this week.

Matz allowed a total of three runs on three hits and one walk through his 4 2/3 innings. The third run – the one that tied the game – came after Ryan Fernandez had relieved Matz with a runner on second base.

Marmol, Descalso ejected in fourth

Three batters after Goldschmidt broke a tie game with his solo homer in the fourth inning, two members of the Cardinals’ dugout were ejected.

It’s unlikely the issues were contained to Tuesday’s game.

Bench coach Daniel Descalso was tossed from the game during Pedro Pages’ at-bat, and after walking out to the field to talk with home-plate umpire Lance Barrett, manager Marmol was ejected as well. Barrett tossed Marmol as the manager walked away. Throughout Tuesday’s game the Cardinals had opinions on the strike zone, and that came a day after Marmol noted in his postgame press conference that starter Andre Pallante did not get a call on a strike that upended his first inning.

Replays showed that Pallante’s fastball was in the strike zone, though by calling it a ball the ump extended the inning, and it blossomed for the Brewers into a three-run homer.

The ejection Tuesday was Marmol’s fifth of the season.

The previous time Marmol and Descalso were both ejected, hitting coach Turner Ward and pitching coach Dusty Blake split the direction of the game between their disciplines. That tandem ejection of manager and bench coach came on May 12.

And it was also in Milwaukee.

Goldschmidt adds another daily double

It took first baseman Goldschmidt one swing to move closer to club history and add to the Cardinals’ two-out rally in the first inning.

Goldschmidt hit the third of three doubles in the first off Brewers starter Aaron Civale. Masyn Winn led off the game with a double into the left-center gap, and he scored on a sacrifice fly from Nolan Arenado. Brendan Donovan restarted the rally with a two-out rally, and he scored when Goldschmidt socked a pitch to the right-center gap.

The hit gave Goldschmidt a double in six consecutive games.

That matches Matt Carpenter’s streak back in 2017, and it is two shy of the club record, according to Cardinals research. Yadier Molina doubled in eight consecutive games in 2016. Molina had two double streaks of seven or more games in his career, and in Cardinals history he and Joe Medwick are the only ones with streaks longer than Goldschmidt’s.

The double Tuesday night also extended Goldschmidt’s hitting streak to 10 consecutive games even as it gave the Cardinals a 2-0 lead.

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