This season hasn’t turned out the way the Boston Red Sox expected, but the pitching?

Excellent.

Friday night was yet another display of elite pitching. An historic display, as closer Aroldis Chapman passed Hall of Famer Hoyt Wilhelm for the most relief strikeouts in Major League Baseball History.

The final strikeout of Wilhelm’s Hall of Fame career came on June 26, 1972. Fifty-three years later, 19,722 days, to be specific, Chapman was ready to meet the moment. The veteran flamethrower punched out Denzer Guzman on three pitches for his 1,364th career K and the first out of the bottom of the ninth. The history-making pitch was a 98.6 mph sinker, and the Angels third baseman went down swinging.

“What a career he’s had,” Red Sox interim manager Chad Tracy told reporters of his veteran closer.

After back-to-back singles by Jorge Soler and Vaughn Grissom, which brought Jo Adell to the plate as the tying run, Chapman had seen enough. Adell grounded into an inning-ending double play, and the Red Sox opened their tri-city trip with a 5-2 win.

The night was largely consumed by another elite pitching performance. Fresh off a deep no-hit bid against the New York Yankees last weekend, Red Sox starter Jake Bennett set new career-highs in innings and pitches thrown. The rookie left-hander’s 7 2/3 frames were far more meticulous than the two earned runs and five hits would suggest; he took a perfect game into the bottom of the fifth, and a shutout bid into the eighth.

“He was awesome,” Tracy said of Bennett. “Couldn’t have asked for more. It was a really, really great performance.”

Bennett’s attempt at perfection was broken up by none other than Grissom. The former Chris Sale trade chip singled with one-out to become the first Angels baserunner of the weekend, but Bennett worked around him with ease.

Jose Siri’s 408-foot blast to right-center was just the third hit Bennett allowed, and it cut Boston’s lead to four. The rookie southpaw was officially out of gas by the eighth; when Josh Lowe followed Siri with a first-pitch single advanced to second on a wild pitch and scored Zach Neto’s two-out RBI single,Tracy called for righty reliever Garrett Whitlock.

Angels starter Reid Detmers managed to complete five innings, but they were far from clean. He allowed five earned runs on seven hits, walked three and struck out five, on 104 pitches (66 for strikes).

The Red Sox immediately pounced on Detmers, though Ceddanne Rafaela’s one-out single and stolen base, plus Willson Contreras’ two-out walk, were for naught in the first inning. They took a 1-0 lead in the top of the second when Romy Gonzalez led off with his first triple of the season and quickly touched home on Jarren Duran’s sacrifice fly.

Wilyer Abreu’s 17th double of the year, a Contreras single and Caleb Durbin walk loaded the bases with one-out in the third. Gonzalez singled to right to score two, and a sacrifice bunt by Duran, coupled with a fielding error by Angels first baseman Nolan Schanuel, both plated a run and allowed Duran to reach second base.

Durbin led off the top of the fifth with his eighth home run of the season, a 358-footer, 107.4 mph to left. He hit seven of his eight home runs since May 28, including three in his last eight games.

The Red Sox never scored again. But with pitching like this, they had everything they needed.

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