CLEVELAND >> In a quiet clubhouse, after a loss on Monday that was difficult to digest, reliever Griffin Jax stood in front of reporters after he had given up a go-ahead home run in the eighth inning and called it “heartbreaking.”

Jax had come in an inning earlier to clean up a bases-loaded jam and had done so, successfully. An inning later, the Twins’ lead was gone.

Tuesday, the Twins’ top reliever had another chance, and this time, he came through when his team needed him most, as he so often does. Jax entered the game with a pair of runners on base and navigating around that to seal up a tense 4-1 win for the Twins over the Guardians at Progressive Field.

“It’s definitely a benefit, a perk of being in the bullpen,” Jax said. “You’ve got to keep the nights to one night, and I’m trying to do a better job of that, of just eliminating what happened the night before and coming into the ballpark the next day and wiping the slate clean.”

The Twins (80-71) were trying to stay away from Jax, going to Ronny Henriquez for the seventh inning in perhaps the most high-leverage inning of his career before turning for Jhoan Duran for what they hoped could be a two-inning save.

But Duran, after a clean eighth inning, allowed a leadoff double in the ninth and then, after a strikeout, walked a batter, spelling the end of his night. The Guardians (87-65) ended up loading the bases on a softly-hit ball to shortstop Brooks Lee that he couldn’t make a play on.

With the go-ahead run at the plate, Jax got the groundout he needed, fielding the final out of the game and taking it to first base himself.

“I was just ready to get the ball and get the game over with,” Jax said. “I didn’t want to leave it up to chance.”

Not this late in the season with such a slim margin for error.

At this point, it seems as if every game is a must-win, and this one came with contributions from everyone.

“Everywhere you looked in the dugout, out in the bullpen, everyone played a part in some small way,” manager Rocco Baldelli said.

While runs haven’t come easy in recent weeks, the Twins did enough on Tuesday to pull away from Cleveland.

Matt Wallner, who came into the game 0 for 17 in recent days, snapped out of that skid with a two-out RBI hit in the third inning to give the Twins a lead.

After the Guardians tied it up with a Lane Thomas home run off of starter Zebby Matthews — the only run the rookie gave up in his 4 2/3 innings — Wallner came through with yet another two-out hit in the fifth inning to give the Twins the lead back for good.

All four of the Twins’ runs on Tuesday scored with two outs as Willi Castro, who had not collected an extra-base hit since August, picked the perfect time to hit his first of the month, a two-run homer that gave the Twins an important cushion that they would need.

“I think that’s what it’s going to take if we’re going to get to where we want to get to in the playoffs,” Wallner said. “Damn near every single game is going to be like that. I think that’s awesome to be a part of that situation now and hopefully keep doing that to get into the situation that we want to be.”