ST. LOUIS – With a tired bullpen and a need to string together some wins, Phillies manager Don Mattingly was looking for one thing from starting pitcher Andrew Painter on Monday night.

“We need a good one,” he said before the game.

Painter delivered.

In his third start since returning from Triple A, the 23-year-old right-hander carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning to help the Phillies beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-5, at Busch Stadium.

Pitching with a 3-0 lead, Painter retired the first batter in the sixth before allowing a walk, a double and a two-run single as the Cardinals made it a one-run game. Painter exited at 93 pitches and Alan Rangel got the final two outs of the inning to preserve the lead.

Painter (2-8) earned his second big-league win and first since his debut on March 31. It was the first time since May 18 that the Phillies won a game started by someone other than Zack Wheeler, Cristopher Sanchez, Jesus Luzardo or Aaron Nola.

With the win, the Phillies maintained their hold on the final NL wild-card spot by a game over San Diego. The Phils have 42 games remaining.

Painter struck out six and walked three.

Rangel, the right-hander who has yo-yoed between Triple A and the majors this season, played a huge role in the win.

He got eight outs after Painter left the game, a huge contribution with a large chunk of the bullpen unavailable because of recent workload.

“We knew it before the game,” Mattingly said. “We talked about it. It was exactly how we scripted it as far as we needed eight innings from those two guys. Painter was great and Rangel was really gutsy in that eighth inning.”

Thanks to Kyle Schwarber’s RBI double in the seventh and Edmundo Sosa’s two-run double in the top of the eighth, Rangel carried a 6-2 lead into the bottom of the eighth. The Cardinals got to him for five hits and three runs to make it a one-run game, but the right-hander stranded runners on second and third to get out of the inning with the lead.

As the Cardinals poured it on and Rangel teetered in the eighth, no one got up to throw in the Phillies’ bullpen.

Frankly, the Phils looked helpless because of their shorthanded bullpen.

“A little, I guess,” Mattingly said when asked if he felt helpless. “But at that point, you don’t have options. You just have to live with it. It was one of the easiest games I’ve ever managed because you know you’re not doing anything.

“We had one bullet out there, (Jonathan) Bowlan, that we were willing to use. You can use guys, but you’d hurt guys. It was a huge win for us knowing where we were with the ‘pen. To get that from Painter and Alan was huge.”

Bowlan – the Phillies’ one bullet in the bullpen – notched his first big-league save with a quick ninth inning. The likable, 29-year-old right-hander was a little emotional after the game. He grew up a Cardinals fan in the Memphis area, not far from the longtime home of the Cards’ Triple A team. His dad, Mark, pitched in the Cardinals’ minor-league system. A large contingent of his family and friends were at the game.

“It was a very special night,” Bowlan said. “To get my first save with my family here was very special.”

Mattingly was so committed to getting the bullpen some rest, he said he would have gone to catcher Garrett Stubbs if the game had gone into extra innings. Bowlan prevented that.

Bowlan couldn’t say enough about the job the rookie tandem of Painter and Rangel did.

“They competed their tails off,” he said.

Since coming back from Triple A, Painter has pitched 15 1/3 innings and allowed just five runs. He’s kept the team in games, just what a No. 5 starter needs to do.

Painter has ditched his splitter and gone to a circle change. He used the pitch effectively Monday night and got three strikeouts with it. His four-seam fastball hit 98.1 mph.

“That was something the team needed,” Mattingly said. “It was good for him and our club.”

The Phillies’ bullpen is still fatigued. Even after so many guys got a break Monday night, Mattingly said it was not a full reset. It would help if Sanchez could go deep in the game Tuesday night.

“We’re closer to where we need to be,” Mattingly said. “We’ll see (Tuesday) where we’re at. We had a couple guys that needed two days, but we’ll have a few more available (Tuesday). Still not a full boat, but we’ll have a few more guys.”