Sonnanstine gives big-name performance

Tampa Bay starter Andy Sonnanstine was slinging the ball with authority. (Jim Davis/Globe Staff)

Tomato, tomahto. Doesn't matter. Phonetics aside, they're the same thing.

Ditto Garza, Sonnanstine. Styles beside the point, they're one and the same. Young, aggressive, confident, and capable of getting a key out at any time, they were supposed to be part of a young Tampa Bay Rays team that would be in awe of this American League Championship Series stuff, especially at Fenway Park.

Only thing is, no one provided the script to the Rays, which means their young pitchers didn't follow along. Instead, Andy Sonnanstine, 25, last night followed in the footsteps of Matt Garza, 24, and handcuffed the Red Sox in such a way that Tampa Bay edged within one game of an improbable World Series appearance.

As did Garza in Monday's 9-1 laugher, Sonnanstine got exorbitant offensive support in a 13-4 Game 4 blowout.

But strip the Rays of half their offense on either night and it very well may not have mattered; their young pitchers were in such control and so pinpoint in carrying out a plan of attack against the beleaguered Red Sox that it's hard to envision different outcomes.

Doesn't matter that Garza did it with power, while Sonnanstine employed guile. It's a potato, potahto sort of thing. The bottom line, after all, is what matters.

And a second postseason win at Fenway in two days was achieved in large part because the Red Sox couldn't put a bit of pressure on Sonnanstine.

It was a thought Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon put forth Monday night - "Starting pitching sets the tone," he said - and if you look beyond the moonshots and the combined nine hits and seven RBIs between Carl Crawford and Willy Aybar, there again was an early statement from a Tampa Bay pitcher that production wasn't going to come easy for Boston, no matter how many lineup changes it made.

Case in point: The first inning. Staked to a 3-0 lead, Sonnanstine showed that these are young Rays, but it's not like the old days when good things for Tampa were followed by even better things for the opposition.

As Garza did Monday, Sonnanstine proved stifling when necessary.

If the Red Sox had visions of coming right back in their half of the first, forget it. Sonnanstine retired J.D. Drew, Dustin Pedroia, and David Ortiz on 11 tidy pitches. In the second, he worked his way out of a two-on, one-out jam by inducing Coco Crisp to hit into a 4-6-3 double play.

At that point, Sonnanstine had pitched 15 innings against the Red Sox in 2008 without yielding an earned run, a streak that came to a halt when Kevin Cash hit a leadoff home run in the third.

And just how did the righthander from Ohio respond to that adversity? By retiring the next 12 batters - six on ground balls, five on fly balls, one on a line drive.

"He's got a lot of deception in his delivery. But what he does really well, even with a lot of movement in that delivery, he keeps it intact," said Red Sox manager Terry Francona, whose team finally showed some life against Sonnanstine in the seventh. Of course, by the time of that Ortiz leadoff triple, the Rays were in front, 11-1, and Sonnanstine had perhaps fallen asleep during his team's five-run sixth.

"It was awesome," said Sonnanstine, who went 13-9 in this, his first full year in the major leagues. "It's exciting every time I've got to get up and go slap hands with the guys who just scored - and I did that quite a bit tonight, so I was real happy about that."

Humor aside, Sonnanstine ran his postseason record to 2-0 by taking command, much to the delight of Maddon.

"Andy set the tone for us. He really threw strikes," said Maddon. "I always pay attention to the radar gun readings with him. He was a lot of 87-88 [miles per hour], which was really good, actually a lot of 88s and 89s. When he's pitching at that velocity, there's a bigger disparity between that and his offspeed stuff, and that's when he does really well."

How well? Over the first six innings, Sonnanstine faced just 20 batters, two over the minimum. He was touched for a run in the seventh, then left the game with one out in Boston's two-run eighth, but by this point, the game was long over. Much to his surprise.

"I sure didn't know we were going to score that many runs," said Sonnanstine.

And the Sox hitters didn't know what to do with him.

"He gathers himself . . . and he's obviously very confident against us right now," said Francona softly.

Then, even more softly, he added, "As he should."

Neether, nyther. Like Garza and Sonnanstine, it doesn't matter.