Having Starters Can Finish Off an Opponent BOSTON - The prevailing theory before the American League Championship Series was that the Boston Red Sox" approach at the plate could wear down the Detroit Tigers" starters and force them to use their vulnerable bullpen. That is exactly what happened in Game 1. "We achieved what we set out to do," Boston Manager John Farrell said, "and that was to get in the bullpen in the middle innings." Farrell added, of course, that things did not work out. The assumption was that the Red Sox would have something to show for their disciplined at-bats, but on Saturday, they did not even manage a hit until the ninth inning. They fell, 1-0, to Anibal Sanchez and four relievers in the second 1-0 playoff game of the day. In the afternoon game in the National League, the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Los Angeles Dodgers by that score, despite scratching only two hits. The Cardinals got their run with help from a passed ball and a sacrifice fly. "You've got to be fundamentally sound right now," Boston catcher David Ross said. That's why these games are so hyped, because you know any little thing can change the course of the game. True enough, although there are exceptions. The Red Sox made eight errors here in the first two games of the 2004 World Series, against St. Louis, but won both. Boston swept that series with suffocating pitching, allowing just three runs in the final three games. The Tigers" pitching staff set a major league record for strikeouts this season, and on Saturday the Red Sox fanned 17 times. Boston's hitters followed their usual formula of working deep counts, slapping foul balls and drawing walks. But they failed to adjust for the strike zone of the plate umpire, Joe West, and took too many borderline pitches. They coaxed six walks from Sanchez and drove him from the game after 116 pitches in six innings. But against Sanchez's 95-mile-an-hour fastballs and wipeout sliders - delivered after a deceptive, back-turning windup - the Red Sox hit just two balls out of the infield. "He stayed on the corners," Dustin Pedroia said. He pitched for the strikeout - he struck out a lot and he walked a lot. We had opportunities; we didn't get any hits. Sanchez was mortal against Oakland in the division series (four and a third innings, eight hits, five earned runs in a Game 3 loss), but he has thrown a no-hitter before, for the Marlins in 2006, and lost one in the ninth inning this season. He led the A.L. in earned run average, at 2.57, and ranked third in strikeouts per nine innings, with 9.989. In Jon Lester, the Tigers faced a starter who has also thrown a no-hitter. So has Boston's Game 2 starter, Clay Buchholz, and Detroit's Game 3 starter, Justin Verlander. John Lackey, who starts Game 3 for the Red Sox, once allowed a hit to the first batter of a game, then retired 27 in a row. You get the idea. Teams make the postseason for a lot of reasons, but shutdown starting pitching is probably most important. Nine of the top 11 teams in starters" E.R.A. reached the postseason. The exceptions: the Washington Nationals and, surprise, the Mets. Only the Cleveland Indians, who lost the wild-card game, finished outside the top 11. Those rotations only get tougher in October, because teams rarely have to use their fifth starter. Lester has a 2.24 earned run average in eight career postseason starts, but he actually has a losing record, 3-4, in those games. "In the postseason, with the days off, at least for me, you get so much adrenaline you don't really worry about how your body feels, or your mechanics," Lester said. It's just a matter of who's up, what's the game plan, what are we trying to do? Lester won his first postseason start, in Game 4 of the 2007 World Series in Colorado, to clinch the Red Sox" last championship. He was 23, a year older than this October's breakout starting sensation, Michael Wacha of the Cardinals. Wacha, who lost a no-hitter with two outs in the ninth inning of his final regular-season start, held Pittsburgh without a hit until the eighth inning of Game 4 of the division series, with the Cardinals facing elimination. That was the Pirates" only hit in a 2-1 loss. They fell meekly in the finale to Adam Wainwright, who worked a complete game. The Tigers" series with Oakland featured more offensive futility. With Verlander and Sonny Gray dominating Game 2, neither team scored until Stephen Vogt singled home the winning run off Rick Porcello in the bottom of the ninth. The same starters met in the decisive Game 5, a 3-0 Tigers victory in which Verlander did not allow a hit until there were two outs in the seventh. He gave up two hits in eight innings. Ross, the Red Sox catcher, called it "unbelievable" to have two 1-0 playoff games on the same day. Then he added, "But I wouldn't doubt it." Indeed, while this was the first day in baseball history that included two 1-0 playoff games, low-scoring games are fairly common in October. Two World Series (in 1949 and 1966) have included consecutive games with that score. In the height of the steroid era, in 2001, three of the four division series had a 1-0 game. Elite starting pitching does not always prevail in October. The light-hitting San Francisco Giants shelled Cliff Lee in the 2010 World Series opener, and did the same to Verlander last fall. Boston had little trouble in the first round with Matt Moore and David Price, two star left-handers for Tampa Bay. But in Game 1 on Saturday, the Red Sox hung a lonely vertical white line under their "H" column on the old left-field scoreboard. The pattern of this punchless postseason continues.