BOSTON — In 2005, Anibal Sanchez was a prospect on the path to Fenway Park, to postseason glory, to the spoils that eventually went to Jon Lester, his teammate on the Class AA Portland Sea Dogs, a Red Sox affiliate.
They shared a rotation and visions of a bright future with the Red Sox, rising in lock step. But their paths ultimately diverged. Sanchez was traded. Lester was promoted. They had little in common beyond that summer in Maine.
Their link was revived Saturday night, and Lester now has a more ignominious recognition: he was the losing pitcher in a 1-0 win by Sanchez and the Detroit Tigers in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, a game that very nearly made its way into the record books.
Daniel Nava singled with one out in the ninth inning to end the bid by five Tigers pitchers to throw the third postseason no-hitter. They struck out 17 Red Sox. The game's star was Sanchez, who consummated his circuitous path back to Fenway in this most unusual manner. His postseason line was unlike any before — 6 innings pitched, 6 walks, 12 strikeouts, 0 hits allowed.
Sanchez, with his fastball flaring into the mid-90s and a 90-mile-per-hour diving slider that turned devastating Saturday, rarely worked ahead in the count and battled with almost every Boston hitter. Keeping his pitch count in check was a struggle from the outset, when he needed 52 pitches to work through two innings. He was pulled after 116 pitches.
But the Red Sox still had not had a hit; nobody had even come close. Only five batters even put a ball in play. The rest either struck out or walked.
His 12th strikeout, of Stephen Drew, came with the bases loaded in the sixth and the Tigers leading, 1-0. The crowd was on its feet, but Drew struck out on a 1-2 slider in the dirt, and Sanchez did a pirouette off the mound in delight.
"I felt good today," Sanchez said. "Especially when you're back from a bad outing. I don't feel anything close to what I felt in Oakland."
Said Tigers Manager Jim Leyland: "He was probably a little careful early, but he got rolling pretty good. He made some good pitches and gave us what we needed."
The Red Sox stormed through a four-game series with the Tampa Bay Rays with a diversified and resourceful offense, blending speed, power and the cocksure self-belief of a 97-win playoff team.
But it all crumbled against Sanchez — the speed, the power, the self-belief. They showed frustration toward the home-plate umpire, Joe West. The leadoff hitter Jacoby Ellsbury, their postseason catalyst, went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts.
"We had some big opportunities in that first, second and sixth inning, and that two-out base hit was elusive," Red Sox Manager John Farrell said. "They're a talented group. They have powerful stuff and they executed very well."
Sanchez looked dominating from the outset. In the first inning, he struck out four batters — Shane Victorino reached on a wild pitch after a swinging strike three — becoming the first player since Orval Overall in 1908 to do so in a postseason game. Not long ago, Sanchez helped lay the foundation for Boston's 2007 title, when he was traded to the Florida Marlins as part of the deal for Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell, who became two of the Red Sox' cogs. It was a fruitful deal for Boston, but they may not have pictured Sanchez's later success.
At age 29, in his second season with Detroit, Sanchez led the American League with a 2.57 earned run average this year, but he was roughed up by the Oakland A's in his first postseason start, allowing six runs (five earned) in four and a third innings in a Game 3 loss.
"Obviously," Lester said of Sanchez on Friday, "his stats speak for themselves."
In the fifth, the Tigers ran into two outs on the base paths. After Jhonny Peralta doubled to lead off the inning, he was caught drifting too far off second base on a sharp grounder to first. When Mike Napoli adroitly fired to second, Peralta could not scramble back in time.
When Omar Infante was thrown out at home by third baseman Will Middlebrooks for the second out of the inning, and Austin Jackson flew out to end the threat, it seemed as if nobody was ever going to find a way to score.
But the Tigers cobbled together a run in the sixth, on a two-out, two-strike bloop single to center by Peralta, even as the crowd showered him with "steroid" chants, referring to Peralta's 50-game suspension for his role in the Biogenesis investigation.
The Tigers had other opportunities to add support, namely in the eighth, when they had the bases loaded against Craig Breslow, who induced a deep flyout by Alex Avila to end the threat. Then in the ninth, Drew made a bobbling, over-the-shoulder grab with two outs on a pop-up by Prince Fielder to save another run from scoring.
So it remained Detroit's advantage by the slimmest of margins until the ninth, when the Red Sox anthem, "Shipping Up To Boston," blared and the closer, Joaquin Benoit, came in to try to complete the no-hit bid.
After Mike Napoli struck out, Nava battled with Benoit in a seven-pitch at-bat that ultimately ended with Nava standing on first, the only Boston base runner who earned his way there with a hit.
After a Drew flyout, Quintin Berry, pinch-running for Nava, stole second base. But with the count full, Benoit got Xander Bogaerts to pop out to short to end the game.
The no-hitter had been lost. But not the win in Game 1.
INSIDE PITCH
The Tigers added the left-handed reliever Phil Coke to their American League Championship Series roster, after he missed the divisional series with elbow trouble. Coke was 0-5 with a 5.40 earned run average during the regular season. Last year, he had two saves and did not allow a run in five and two-thirds innings in the A.L.C.S. against the Yankees.
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