From the second inning to the first batter of the ninth, Cliff Lee looked like the best pitcher in baseball.

After all, when you throw 105 pitches and roughly 95 percent of them are fastballs to major league hitters, you must be pretty good.

As matter of fact and more to the point, if you’re throwing that many fastballs, you must be just about perfect with your location.

And if you ask the Red Sox batters, that’s what he was until Marco Scutaro opened the ninth with a clean single.

But that’s not the pitch Lee would like to have over.

It’s the 1-1 fastball he threw to Kevin Youkilis with the tying run on third and just one out from his second straight complete game with his new Ranger teammates.

“I was trying to go away but just pulled it a little bit over the plate,” Lee recalled.

And Youkilis didn’t miss his chance. He lined a fastball from Lee down the left field line for a game-tying double, Youkilis’ second hit off Lee on the night.

It wasn’t what he threw but where he threw it that gave Lee his biggest sense of remorse.

“I threw a pitch that caught a quite a bit of plate and he got a hit,” Lee said. “I wish I could have that pitch back but all-in-all, I gave the team a chance, got deep in the game but still kind of frustrated with giving up that run in the ninth when we have a one-run lead there but other than that, I’m pretty pleased with the way it went.”

Indeed, Lee needed only 83 pitches to get through eight dominating innings, facing only one pressure situation in the first. But that ended with Adrian Beltre grounding into a 4-6-3 double-play. Mike Cameron did double with one out in the fifth. But Lee struck out Bill Hall and Kevin Cash to end that inning, again throwing almost all fastballs.

So there was no reason for him to change, even in the ninth inning, even with the tying run at third and even with one of the best fastball-hitting batters in the game at the plate with two outs.

“I was going right at him,” Lee said. “It worked for me all night. There was no sense for me to change my approach there. Obviously in hindsight, maybe I should’ve thrown something different. If I throw it in a better spot, I think it’s a better result.”

Lee began the game throwing 28 of his first 32 pitches for strikes. He finished with 105, 75 for strikes.

“It went pretty good,” Lee said. “I threw a lot of strikes. We made some really good plays. We had a good chance to win the game there in the ninth with a one-run lead, two outs and a guy on third. Locating fastballs. That was it. Throwing fastballs down in the zone and mostly fastballs away, mixing one inside, here and there, and a cutter here and there. But that was really it, locating fastballs.”

How amazingly efficient can Lee be? He allowed six runs in his first start on the Saturday before the break in a 6-1 loss to Baltimore. He needed just 95 pitches to last all nine innings in the complete-game loss.

“I was a little more comfortable,” Lee said after Saturday’s no-decision. “Obviously, my routine was kind of weird with having to go to the All-Star Game and all that stuff but yeah, I felt a little more comfortable with what was going on. I felt alight the other day, too. I just missed location more often than today.”