At last, crunch time was punch time

Let's dance: Airborne Kevin Youkilis, who scored the winning run, and Jed Lowrie were front and center in the postgame celebration. (Barry Chin/Globe Staff)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - When Jed Lowrie doubled in the bottom of the seventh inning Thursday night, it seemed the hit would serve scant purpose aside, perhaps, from further reminding the Red Sox of their offensive inadequacy. They had marooned all six base runners they managed in the previous six innings against the Tampa Bay Rays. Their first 10 at-bats with runners on base produced one single and no runs.

Sox hitters had spent the American League Championship Series foundering when presented the opportunity to score a runner. When Coco Crisp strode to the plate with two outs in the seventh, Lowrie still stuck on second, the Sox stood 6 for 40 during the series with runners in scoring position, a .150 average.

Then, suddenly, the ineptness vanished, replaced by the steady ability of men who have done this before. Crisp slapped a single to left-center. Dustin Pedroia drove home Lowrie with a bullet to right. David Ortiz launched a three-run homer.

The hits kept coming until the unthinkable had happened, Boston's 8-7 comeback victory. Again, in a postseason game the Red Sox needed to win, hits had materialized at the necessary moment. Starting with Crisp, six Sox batted with at least one runner on base in the final three innings. Five drilled hits, and the Sox stranded zero runners.

Part coincidence, part momentum, part skill, part something else that falls between clutch and poised, the Red Sox have mastered the intangible of finding hits when they need them, regardless of how bogged down their offense seems.

"They all realize what's at stake," said hitting coach Dave Magadan. "Everybody does such a good job of grinding out their at-bats. From David to [Kevin Youkilis] to Pedroia to J.D. [Drew] to Coco, you can't say enough about the at-bats those guys put together. I think it says a lot about the character of those guys and everybody in this clubhouse. They weren't going to go down without a fight."

In their five playoff victories this season, the Sox have scored the winning run in the ninth inning three times - Drew's ground-rule single Thursday, Drew's two-run homer in Game 2 of the Division Series against the Angels, and Lowrie's RBI roller in Game 4 of the ALDS. With a roster chock full of playoff experience, the Sox can excel in tense moments.

"It's the situation that we've pretty much been facing every game in the playoffs," Ortiz said. "You get down or whatever the situation is. Next thing you know, they let you breathe, and you come back and put it together and win the game. We know how that feels."

Even when the Red Sox trailed, 7-0, heading to the seventh inning Thursday night, the dugout somehow buzzed with optimism. Pedroia saw fans leaving the park and thought to himself, "If they don't believe, we better start believing." The Red Sox told one another, "Keep grinding."

Every at-bat maintained importance, the lopsided score notwithstanding. They invented reasons why they could still win. They reminded each other they had worked the pitch count all game on starter Scott Kazmir so they could face the bullpen - even though Tampa Bay owns one of the best bullpens in the league.

"When you're down in a series and you're one game away from going home, the only thing I'm thinking about is just playing in the moment," Pedroia said. "Just finding a way to win that inning or that pitch. Everything else doesn't matter."

Before their initial struggles in run-scoring situations against the Rays, the Sox delivered in the ALDS. They scored 14 of their 18 runs against the Angels with two outs. Before Thursday night, they had scored only six runs with two outs in the ALCS. Why, then, the sudden shifts?

"I think a lot of it can be coincidental, especially in short series," Magadan said. "I think our guys have pretty good approaches. For the most part, we have a lot of confidence in those situations, where the game's on the line or you need a big hit late in the game.

"It just becomes a little more glaring when you're taking it in the context of a five-game series or a seven-game series. You certainly have times during the year when you have a bad stretch of seven games when you're not getting hits with runners in scoring position. In the postseason, it gets magnified."

Random timing, though, can't explain all of Boston's success. Even experience can't; the Red Sox didn't suddenly age after the sixth inning. On Thursday, seeing meant believing.

When Lowrie drilled his double, the Red Sox had only three hits in the game. Once it dropped in deep right-center field, though, the Sox' confidence surged. One hit led to the next. And another late-game playoff victory, the greatest yet, had come from nowhere.

"It's just kind of a feeling that goes through the dugout," Lowrie said. "The whole hitting-is-contagious thing. It's tough when a team comes out and they just have an onslaught of offense. The crowd got into it, it started to get loud. I don't know if that affected them. It seemed like it at least took a little bit of pressure off of us and put a little bit more on them."

Adam Kilgore can be reached at akilgore@globe.com