Beckett’s success has a big carry-over

BOSTON -- The last time Josh Beckett was on the mound in a postseason game, he pitched a shutout against the New York Yankees to give the Florida Marlins a World Series championship.

It turns out some habits die hard. Because Wednesday, in a different uniform on a different mound in a different league, Beckett picked up right where he left off, pitching the Boston Red Sox to a 4-0 win over the Angels in Game 1 of the American League division series.

And the one guy who played behind him in both games said they looked the same to him.

“This was pretty dominating,” Boston third baseman Mike Lowell said. “He had all his pitches. Was very composed. Was hitting his spots. Great velocity.

“He’s a guy who wants the ball in that situation. And he expects himself to do well.”

Here’s how well Beckett did Wednesday: He threw first-pitch strikes to 25 of the 31 batters he faced, gave up only four hits -- two of which deflected off infielders’ gloves -- did not walk a hitter and threw nearly 80% of his 108 pitches over the plate.

Only five of the 27 outs the right-hander got came on fly balls to the outfield and right fielder J.D. Drew didn’t touch the ball all night.

If any of that surprised anybody, however, don’t count Beckett among them.

“The thing that helps him out most is he goes out there and he thinks he should beat every hitter and should pitch nine innings,” said Kevin Youkilis, whose first-inning home run gave Beckett all the support he would need. “If a guy gets a hit, he says how bad he did or something.”

In that case Beckett was pretty quiet through most of Wednesday’s game. Between Chone Figgins’ leadoff single in the first and Vladimir Guerrero’s one-out single in the seventh, he set down 19 consecutive hitters, matching the third-longest streak in postseason history.

If Beckett was pleased by his effort, however, he wasn’t showing it at his postgame news conference, barely managing a wry smile.

“You go out there and you find out what kind of pitcher you are that day and you just go from there. Just exploiting hitters’ weaknesses. [It] ends up snowballing and every inning you end up with a quicker inning because they know you’re throwing strikes and they’re up there swinging,” said Beckett, the first pitcher to throw a playoff shutout since 2004 and the first to throw shutouts in back-to-back postseason starts since teammate Curt Schilling did it with Arizona in 2001.

Oh, and about that back-to-back shutout thing. Beckett disagrees with Lowell, saying the only similarity between the two games is the other team’s score.

“They’re similar because of the results. I don’t think really anything else is similar,” he said. “I got a lot of ground balls tonight. I got a lot of fly balls that night [against the Yankees].”

There was one other similarity, though. As good as both games were, neither was flawless. Which means Beckett could be even better if the Angels face him again next week.

“He misfired. He was human,” his catcher, Jason Varitek, said. “But when it came down to it, he made pitches.”

And that proved more than enough for Boston Manager Terry Francona.

“That,” he said of Beckett, “was a great performance.”

kevin.baxter@latimes.com