ST. LOUIS — For more than five hours, the Cardinals kept the New York Mets at bay. However, St. Louis also had an equally tough time scoring as well.

Then then the Mets scored twice against Carlos Martinez in the 18th inning — on a sacrifice fly and a bunt — to take a 3-1 victory that prevented the Cardinals from a three-game sweep.

“We just couldn’t push it across when we needed,” St. Louis manager Mike Matheny said. “It’s a shame but they just kept coming.”

The Mets put a runner on base in every inning except the first and had runners in scoring position in all nine extra innings. But the only hit they managed with runners in scoring position came in the 13th when Kevin Plawecki singled off Carlos Villanueva to score Curtis Granderson for the game’s first run.

Kolten Wong tied the score when he led off the bottom of the 13th with a home run off Mets closer Jeurys Familia. Jhonny Peralta singled with one out and went to third on a two-out double by Yadier Molina before Familia struck out Tommy Pham to extend the game.

Five innings later, New York scored its go-ahead runs on a sacrifice fly by Ruben Tejada and a sacrifice bunt by Eric Campbell after loading the bases with no outs against Martinez, who was pitching only because the Cardinals ran out of relievers.