Cardinals 6, Brewers 5: Allen Craig and Pete Kozma bookended a six-run outburst in the third inning with two-run singles as visiting St. Louis halted its recent offensive struggles and downed Milwaukee.

Matt Carpenter, Yadier Molina and David Freese each had two hits and scored a run for the Cardinals, who had scored just 10 runs over their previous five straight games. Jake Westbrook (2-1) worked six innings, giving up a run and six hits while seeing his ERA increase to 1.07 after five starts.

After giving up a single in each of the first two innings, Wily Peralta (2-2) surrendered seven in the third. Westbrook and Carpenter each tallied one with one out and Matt Holliday loaded the bases with two outs when he was hit by a pitch.

Craig opened the scoring with a broken-bat single to left, Molina followed with a sharp RBI single and Freese stretched the margin to 4-0 with a grounder up the middle. Jon Jay loaded the bases again with another single and Kozma plated two more when St. Louis benefited from its third close call at the plate in the inning.

Milwaukee rallied with a run in the fourth, two in the seventh and one apiece in the eighth and ninth to trim the deficit to 6-5. Edward Mujica yielded a one-out single to Carlos Gomez and a two-out RBI single to Alex Gonzalez, but struck out pinch hitter Jonathan Lucroy to post his seventh save in as many chances.

GAME NOTEBOOK: All 12 of the Cardinals’ hits were singles. … Gomez has seven multiple-hit games during a nine-game hitting streak that has lifted his batting average from .295 to .372. … Westbrook has posted a quality start in each of his five turns and yielded one run or less in four of them. He was tagged for three runs on April 21 against the Philadelphia Phillies.