AMERICAN LEAGUE
Japan’s Daisuke Matsuzaka carried a no-hitter into the seventh and matched a season-high nine strikeouts as Boston beat Tampa 2-0 in the opening game of their Major League Baseball semi-final series.
Kevin Youkilis had three hits for Boston who won in Tampa for the first time in nine tries this season. Tampa won the regular season series against Boston 10-8.
“My strike zone wasn’t that great today, so I had to rely more on those secondary pitches, like the slider, the cutter and the change-up,” Matsuzaka said.
Matsuzaka (1-0) allowed four hits in seven-plus innings, while walking four.
The right-hander walked the bases loaded in the first, but allowed only one base-runner over the next five frames, before Carl Crawford led off the seventh with a single, ending the no-hit bid.
“You have to keep going with [Matsuzaka],” Jason Varitek said. “Each inning can be different.”
Matsuzaka had made it past the sixth inning only once in his previous six starts, including allowing three runs in five frames against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the American League Division Series.
“With my fastball not where I wanted it to be, I did my best to use those secondary pitches to the corners and I think I was able to do that somewhat effectively,” Matsuzaka said.
The Red Sox got to James Shields (0-1) in the fifth, when Jason Bay drew a lead-off walk and moved to third on Mark Kotsay’s check-swing double down the left field line.
Jed Lowrie followed and got down in the count 0-2, before driving a sacrifice fly to right field.
The Rays threatened in the seventh as Cliff Floyd followed Crawford’s single with one of his own, putting runners at the corners. But Matsuzaka got Dioner Navarro to fly-out to left, struck out Gabe Gross swinging and induced a ground-out to shortstop by Jason Bartlett to escape unscathed.
“We had some opportunities, we didn’t take advantage of them,” Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon said. “It was really a well-pitched game on both sides. It was a clean game. A good game. There was not a lot of hitting, but they just got the couple of runs and we had some opportunities and were not able to take advantage of them.”
Tampa Bay chased Matsuzaka with back-to-back singles leading off the eighth.
Jonathan Papelbon tossed a perfect ninth for the save. He has yet to allow a run in 20-and-two-third career post-season innings, surpassing Joe Niekro’s record of 20 scoreless frames.
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