BOSTON - On Tuesday night, Arizona manager Bob Melvin elected to pitch to Jason Varitek with a base open in a tie game in the eighth and rookie Brandon Moss on deck.

After Varitek had won the game with a single, Melvin explained that if he had thought Moss would hit, he was 100 percent certain he would have walked Varitek. Melvin, though, thought the Sox would counter with Kevin Youkilis as a pinch hitter, so he didn’t call for the free pass to Varitek.

Last night, Melvin was faced with a similar decision with Moss in the on-deck circle.

Boston had runners at second and third with one out in the sixth and light-hitting catcher Kevin Cash at the plate with left-hander Randy Johnson on the mound. The Sox were up, 1-0.

Melvin had Johnson intentionally walk Cash — the first intentional walk of Cash’s big-league career — to get at Moss.

“I always like hitting with runners in scoring position,” said Moss, the rookie outfielder/first baseman.

Moss, though, foiled the strategy. He fell behind in the count at 0-and-2, battled back to 2-and-2 and then hung in on a slider and crushed it on a line to right-center for a sacrifice fly and a 2-0 Boston advantage.

“He’s a very large human being,” said Moss about Johnson. “He throws from a different angle and he has great stuff. I knew how he was going to pitch to me. I hadn’t seen more than two fastballs all night. He threw me a lot of sliders, so that’s what I was looking for.”