DETROIT -- Three games between the two highest-scoring offenses in baseball. A total of 13 runs scored, four coming on one David Ortiz swing. Two games decided by a 1-0 score. Sixty-eight strikeouts, an average of almost 23 a game.

The term "Hitless Wonders'' comes to mind, although the patent on that one was claimed more than a century ago by a Chicago baseball team, the 1906 White Sox, who were shut out 16 times that season and scored two or fewer runs 57 times, yet still managed to win the World Series.

Seven years after homering off Justin Verlander in his first big league at-bat, Mike Napoli did it again in Game 3, a 1-0 Red Sox victory. Jim Davis/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

To which the Boston Red Sox, who came out on the high side of Tuesday's 1-0 duel between John Lackey and Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers and now lead the American League Championship Series two games to one, shrug their shoulders and point to the win column.

"Winning kind of hides everything, right?'' outfielder Jonny Gomes said after Mike Napoli's seventh-inning home run off Verlander proved the biggest hit in Motown and produced the day's only run. "It's pretty easy to leave these double doors with a win, regardless of what happens at the plate.

"We're going against the best. They've got some salty veterans with some good stuff, well-decorated. But we're going to find a way to touch the plate any way possible, and we were able to do that tonight.''

On Sunday night in Fenway Park, the Red Sox won a game started by Max Scherzer, the 21-game winner and odds-on favorite to win the AL Cy Young Award.

On Tuesday afternoon it was Verlander, who had to make room on his mantel not only for the Cy Young Award in 2011 but the MVP trophy as well. That version of Verlander was spotted only intermittently for much of this season, but had reemerged with a vengeance in September.

It had been nearly a month since Verlander had given up a run -- the last man to score against him was Justin Smoak of the Mariners, who took him deep in Detroit on Sept. 18. In his past four starts, Verlander had allowed 15 hits, while striking out 43 and walking six.

And his string of zeroes had grown to 34 innings in a row -- 21 in the postseason -- when he began the seventh inning by retiring Ortiz on a roller into the shift. The next batter was Napoli, whose baptism into the big leagues had come courtesy of Verlander.

In 2006, Verlander had been a relative newcomer himself, but at 23 was well on his way to winning 17 games and being named the AL Rookie of the Year. Facing Verlander in the third inning that day in May, Napoli drove a 1-and-2 pitch over the left-center-field fence in Comerica Park, becoming just the third Angels player to go deep in his first at-bat in the majors.

"I was here for that,'' Lackey said. "It was pretty cool. He got called up and hit one off Verlander on a curveball. I said, 'We need that dude, keep him around here.'''

Seven years later, with Lackey and Napoli now in Red Sox uniforms, Napoli drove a full-count fastball from Verlander that left the premises in roughly the same area he did when he had no whiskers on his chin, never mind an English hedgerow.