BOSTON – Maybe the Twins learned something from their four nail-biting games in Cleveland because on Friday night, they won in a very Guardians way: They had the better bullpen.

Barely.

David Festa gave up one run in a taxing five-inning start, and eight members of the Twins relief corps put zeroes on the scoreboard the rest of the way. The Twins, shut out by Boston rookie Richard Fitts for five innings, eventually managed to scrounge up their biggest inning since Monday — three whole runs — against Red Sox relievers and claim a 4-2, 12-inning victory at Fenway Park.

The victory, only the Twins’ sixth in the past 17 games, carried even more meaning, thanks to the ballpark’s old-fashioned scoreboard on the Green Monster, a fixture that confirmed that the Tigers were getting badly beaten in Baltimore. The two results mean the Twins once again own a lead on hard-charging Detroit, a one-game edge with eight to play for the final American League wild-card invitation.

It’s hard to describe this victory as a statement game, unless the statement is about how their offense remains stuck in quicksand. Yes, the Twins racked up 13 hits on the night, but 12 of them were singles, and until the 12th inning, none of them, not even the four that came with runners in scoring position, drove in a run.

The breakthrough came, finally, nearly four hours after the game’s first pitch. With Cooper Criswell, the seventh Boston reliever called upon, on the mound, Byron Buxton singled off third baseman Romy Gonzalez’s glove, moving courtesy runner Kyle Farmer to third base. Trevor Larnach followed with a hit that traveled an even shorter distance, glancing off Criswell’s glove and bouncing toward shortstop.

But it was enough to score Farmer with the tiebreaking run, and when, after Carlos Correa walked to load the bases, Matt Wallner singled to right, Buxton scored, too. The final run of the Twins’ biggest inning since Monday was scored when Willi Castro drove a sacrifice fly to the warning track in right field.

The Twins appeared in danger of being shut out as Fitts maintained his career 0.00 ERA by breezing through five innings against a Twins team that has been held to two runs or fewer eight times this month. Only once did a Twin reach third base against Fitts, who is now only the second pitcher in major league history to start his career with three starts of at least five innings and zero earned runs scored.

Twins hitters kept pestering the Boston bullpen, though, finally scoring the tying run in the seventh after Buxton and Larnach singled with one out against veteran righthander Chris Martin. Correa followed with what appeared to be a double-play grounder, but Rafael Devers’ throw to second base was off-line, and Correa reached safely as Buxton scored.

Festa pitched his way through some long at-bats — twice he struck out Red Sox hitters with his eighth pitch, and he needed 11 pitches to whiff designated hitter Tyler O’Neill in the first inning. All that effort ran his pitch count to a career-high 103 pitches in five innings.

The lone run allowed came in the fourth inning, when he walked O’Neill to start the inning. A one-out single by Wilyer Abreu moved O’Neill up a base, and a two-out single by Trevor Story, on a soft line drive to right-center, scored Boston’s lone run.

Twins relievers put three zeros on the scoreboard after Festa departed. And they did it despite a Red Sox hitter reaching second base in each inning. After a leadoff seventh-inning double by center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela, for instance, Cole Sands confidently struck out the top three hitters in Boston’s order to prevent a run.

The Red Sox, who tied their franchise record with 20 strikeouts, went 1-for-19 with runners in scoring position.

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