Try instead of check

Is it better to catch blocks using try-catch or to check blocks using if-else? Or more concretely, is my try-catch code Pythonic and appropriate?

Mission: https://py.checkio.org/en/mission/sum-by-type/

try-catch

def sum_by_types(items: list) -> str | int:
    strings, digits = "", 0
    for item in items:
        try:
            digits += item
        except TypeError:
            strings += item
    return strings, digits

if-else

def sum_by_types(items: list) -> str | int:
    strings, digits = "", 0
    for item in items:
        if isinstance(item, str):
            strings += item
        else:
            digits += item
    return strings, digits