PITTSBURGH -- Brewers bench coach Pat Murphy does most of his work away from the notepads and microphones, but he made a late-night exception Friday after Lorenzo Cain left his fingerprints all over a 7-6 win in 10 innings over the Pirates at PNC Park.

There was the wall-banging catch to end the second inning with the bases loaded and everyone in motion, preventing the Brewers from falling into another early deficit. That was good. There was the uncharacteristic flub in the seventh that brought the Pirates to life. That turned out badly. And then there was Cain’s third hit of the night, a tie-breaking single in the 10th off Pittsburgh closer Javier Vazquez that may have lacked in exit velocity -- 77.5 mph, according to Statcast -- but moved Murphy to speak up.

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“He’s trying really hard, and that’s not always the best. But the guy is special,” said Murphy. “He plays like he does tonight, that’s game-changing. Playing with that passion? That’s special. Tonight? Special. That’s the Lo Cain I know and love.”

The win, besides ending a three-game losing streak, spared the Brewers from a repeat of last year’s visit to Pittsburgh just before the break. That was a five-game series and the Brewers lost them all, including a rain-drenched finale that proved to be the low point of what became a special season. This year’s first half has provided its own challenges -- Friday’s extra-innings contest included -- but the Brewers find themselves in first place in the division at 47-42. They gained half of a game Friday on the idle Cubs.

While the Cubs took a day off, the Brewers played one of their most eventful games all year.

“We battled,” Milwaukee manager Craig Counsell said. “It wasn’t pretty.”

“A lot of things happened,” Cain said. “At the end of the day, we found a way to come back and win. We definitely needed that. It was a big boost for the boys.”

It looked like the Brewers would get that boost in the usual nine innings after Jesús Aguilar homered and drove in three runs in an increasingly rare start at first base. Aguilar’s two-out single in the fourth inning ended a Milwaukee scoring drought that spanned 26 innings over parts of four games, including consecutive losses in Cincinnati on Wednesday and Thursday.

Orlando Arcia homered in the top of the seventh to give the Brewers a two-run lead, and it appeared the team would take that lead to the eighth when Jeremy Jeffress induced a lazy fly ball with two outs. But Cain, worried about a collision with converging infielders Arcia and Keston Hiura, dropped it for an error that led to a Pirates run and brought Josh Hader into the game early to protect a one-run lead.

“That’s all me,” Cain said. “I called for it, so I have to go catch it.”

He had done just that in the second inning, when Cain raced to the center field wall to reel in Adam Frazier's deep drive with the bases loaded and Brewers starter Zach Davies in need of an assist. Cain has provided many of those this season, starting on Opening Day when he robbed the Cardinals’ Jose Martinez of a homer to end a one-run Brewers win.

“That’s what I try to do. I try to go out there and be a playmaker,” Cain said.

After Cain's rare mistake put the Brewers in trouble, Hader escaped, and Aguilar and Manny Piña each hit two-run home runs in the eighth inning for a five-run lead that lasted into the ninth. Hader had already recorded four outs on 23 pitches, so manager Craig Counsell trusted the final three outs to Deolis Guerra, the 30-year-old up from Triple-A San Antonio for his first Major League appearance since September 2017. It did not go well.

The Pirates strung together three successive singles to load the bases for Starling Marte's sacrifice fly. Josh Bell followed with a towering, three-run home run that prompted a call for Junior Guerra (no relation), who yielded a game-tying home run to Jung Ho Kang on a first-pitch curveball that sent the game to extra innings.

The Brewers’ disappointment didn’t last long. Arcia sparked a rally with a single and Pina kept it going for Cain, who punched a hit to right field to reclaim the lead in the 10th.

Over on the Brewers' bench, Murphy was fired up.

“Tonight, that gets me excited,” said Murphy. “We shouldn’t have won that game, right? Like, 99 reasons to lose it. That made a huge difference. That’s the Lo Cain we know.”

It was one of three hits for Cain, whose .250/.313/.358 slash line is down across the board, in part because he has been playing through a painful right thumb injury.

“In that situation, contact and on the ground, it works, right?” said Counsell. “He got the job done.”

It meant a second chance for Junior Guerra, who worked around a pair of baserunners in the 10th to get the win. He ended the game with a strikeout of Joe Musgrove, a Pirates pitcher called into pinch-hit duty because Pittsburgh’s bench was empty.

“It felt like the Twilight Zone in a lot of ways,” Counsell said.