If you get ’em out, you get taken out

MIKE Tyson put it best: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

Yet there are those tethered to the same plan no matter how many times they’re knocked cold.

Most MLB bullpens are much the same. They include good pitchers who aren’t always good, transients who aren’t always bad and kids only beginning to establish big league track records.

So what are the chances three or four consecutive relievers of varied or unknown accomplishment will, in order, all be good in the same game, game after game?

Incredibly, most big league managers now play to hit three cherries on every pull and to be dealt four aces every hand. As reader Ron Perri wrote us after Tuesday’s Reds-Yankees game, “Thank goodness Joe Girardi got Tommy Kahnle out of there after his four-pitch, one-batter, one-out stint before he could do any more damage!”

Consider how the Rays, just behind the Yankees and Royals in the AL wild-card race, lost Sunday’s game to the Rangers.

Up, 5-3, manager Kevin Cash removed three consecutive relievers who had allowed a total of just one hit over three innings. He stuck with his magical formula until finding the one Texas could wallop.

Brad Boxberger next allowed two home runs, a walk and three earned runs. The Rays, for no logical reason, lost, 6-5, a game that ran 11 pitchers, 3 hours, 54 minutes.

Still, Sunday’s Tigers 9, Twins 6, beat it for time, tied it for insanity: 11 pitchers, 4:20. Down 4-3 after seven, Twins manager Paul Molitor pulled reliever Ryan Pressly, who had retired all four he faced, three on strikeouts, on just 15 pitches. Wham! Molitor’s next three relievers allowed five runs on six hits and two walks.

And they would do it again. And again. And again.