ST.LOUIS -- Matt Holliday's nose was grazed by a pitch from Andrew Cashner in the sixth inning of Thursday night's series finale against the Padres. St. Louis trailed, 2-1, at the time but came back to win, 6-5, on a walk-off single from Aledmys Díaz.
The nose wasn't fractured, and Holliday is considered day to day.
"Hate seeing that," manager Mike Matheny said. "Think we got real fortunate. Getting hit in the face, it's hard to say it's fortunate, but it could have been a lot worse. His beak is a little sore right now, but structurally, everything checked out good and no concussion either, so [he's] very, very fortunate."
Though Holliday fell to the ground, he stood under his own power and walked to first base while talking to Matheny, who pulled Holliday out of the game. Blood was coming from Holliday's nose as he left the field.
Cashner apologized for the incident.
"Definitely felt terrible about hitting Holliday in the face," Cashner said. "I've never done that. Fastball just got away."
Mike Leake entered as a pinch-runner and Cashner was replaced by Brad Hand, who got Stephen Piscotty to ground out to end the inning. Holliday went 0-for-2 before he left the game.
Jeremy Hazelbaker, who replaced Holliday in left field, committed an error on a fly ball off the bat of Ryan Schimpf to start the seventh; Schimpf reached second and scored. Hazelbaker later doubled and scored on a Jedd Gyorko single in the eighth and used a sacrifice bunt in the ninth to advance Tommy Pham and Kolten Wong to second and third, setting up the winning hit.
"I think it's the all-time best result from getting hit in the face that I might have ever seen," Cardinals starter Adam Wainwright said.