A night that marked a personal pitching milestone in his career mostly was a slog for Yankees ace Gerrit Cole.

Cole became the third-fastest pitcher in baseball history to reach 2,000 career strikeouts, but he was charged with five earned runs over five-plus innings Tuesday before the Yankees tied it on Aaron Judge’s homer in the ninth en route to a 6-5 win in 10 innings over the Orioles at the Stadium.

Cole, who began the day second in ERA in the American League at 2.09, saw that number zoom by more than half of a run to 2.53 after allowing five earned runs for the second time in four starts.

“It’s a pretty special accomplishment [to reach 2,000 strikeouts], but I was pretty depressed about the whole thing for the most part until Judgie came through and picked us up,” said Cole, who became the 87th pitcher in MLB history to reach that punch-out number, and the eighth to do so in a Yankees uniform. “Leaving the game tonight, [I’m] probably more thrilled with how we played as a team as opposed to accomplishing that.”

Coming off a strong outing in which he tossed six shutout innings against the Blue Jays, Cole issued two two-out walks in Tuesday’s first inning before Adam Frazier opened the scoring with a two-run double to right.

Cole’s second-inning strikeouts of Terrin Vavra and Jorge Mateo gave him 2,000 in 278 games over his 11-year MLB career.

Only Randy Johnson (262 games) and Clayton Kershaw (277) reached that round number faster than Cole, who set a Yankees franchise record last season with 257 strikeouts.

He also became the third-fastest in innings pitched (1,714 ²/₃) to reach the 2K mark, behind only Chris Sale (1,626 innings) and Pedro Martinez (1,711 ¹/₃ innings).

Still, the $324 million righty was tagged for solo home runs by Cedric Mullins in the third and Gunnar Henderson in the fourth to extend the Orioles’ lead to 4-0.

The Yankees temporarily got Cole off the hook with Harrison Bader’s solo blast in the fourth and a three-run rally one inning later to tie the score.

But Cole was pulled by Aaron Boone after coughing up consecutive singles to Ryan Mountcastle and Frazier to open the sixth. Vavra’s infield out with the bases loaded later in the inning against reliever Ron Marinaccio plated the go-ahead run.

Judge’s game-tying homer in the ninth spared Cole (5-0) his first loss of the season before Anthony Volpe’s sacrifice fly won it in the 10th.

“My stuff was pretty good, but the command was not good enough,” Cole said.

“I thought his stuff was good, but he wasn’t getting a lot of swings and misses, and they had some good takes against him,” Aaron Boone added. “It was just kind of a grind for him overall.”