Mariners win wild one against Red Sox in 12

BOSTON – Of course eight runs wouldn’t be enough. Heck, the Mariners scored 10 runs on Saturday and still lost by a dozen.

Still, scoring eight runs in nine innings Sunday against the Red Sox shouldn’t have left them grasping for victory and forcing them to play bonus frames.

In the end – 12 innings to be exact – Seattle’s offense was able to overcome the blemishes of its bullpen.

Mike Zunino and Kyle Seager each delivered bases-loaded RBI singles in the top of the 12th and Danny Farquhar worked around an inherited runner to get three outs in the bottom of the inning to secure a 10-8 win.

The M’s avoided an embarrassing sweep and ended a wild, hit-filled, run-scoring weekend of offense at Fenway Park.

The teams combined for 66 runs on 98 hits, including 44 extra-base hits and 17 homers over three games that took a total of 11 hours, 15 minutes to play.

Seattle jumped out to a 7-0 lead in the third and watched it agonizingly slip away, inning by inning, including giving up two runs in the ninth.

“If that would have slipped away from us, it would have been pretty demoralizing for us,” Zunino said.

He made sure it didn’t happen in the top of the 12th. The Mariners loaded the bases on back-to-back singles from Austin Jackson and Mark Trumbo and were aided by Craig Breslow’s fielding error on Logan Morrison’s sacrifice bunt attempt.

Zunino stepped to the plate having broken out of a 0-for-26 slump the night before. With the count 2-2, he hit a hard ground ball that bounced over the head of the drawn infield and into left field, scoring Jackson.

“Early I was looking for something up to drive to the outfield,” he said. “But once there was two strikes, I just wanted to get the bat on the ball and hope for the best.”

Seager followed up with a hard single off left-hander Robbie Ross Jr. into right field to score pinch-runner Brad Miller and make it 10-8. It snapped a 0-for-26 streak with runners in scoring position for Seager.

Keeping that two-run lead in the bottom of the 12th was far from a given. The Mariners had watched closer Carson Smith give up a two-run lead in the ninth inning to send it into extras.

The anxiety went up when Rob Rasmussen, who was working for the third day in a row and in his second inning of relief, walked the leadoff batter.

Manager Lloyd McClendon called his last right-hander remaining – Danny Farquhar. The veteran had endured a miserable year, riding the shuttle between Class AAA Tacoma and the big leagues, never finding consistent success where it mattered most. But he looked like the Farquhar of 2014, striking out the first two hitters he faced and getting Jackie Bradley Jr. to ground out back to the mound and notch his first save of the season. Rasmussen (2-1) got the win.

Robinson Cano had five hits, including his 13th homer. Franklin Gutierrez hit his sixth and seventh homers and Nelson Cruz hammered his 36th.