BOSTON — If Boston Red Sox starter Hunter Dobbins was distracted after an eventful week, he didn’t show it Saturday night against the New York Yankees.
The 25-year-old, who said last weekend in New York that he’d rather retire than play for the Yankees, tossed six scoreless innings, allowing just two hits as the Red Sox pulled off a 4-3 victory to win their second series this week against the Yankees.
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The last Red Sox rookie to go six or more scoreless innings with two or fewer hits allowed was Clay Buchholz when he threw his no-hitter on Sept. 1, 2007.
The win marked the fourth in a row for the Red Sox and gave them six wins in their last seven games. They moved to .500 for the first time since May 24, the day they lost Alex Bregman to a severe quad injury.
“Our goal was to get back to .500, and it really doesn’t matter against who,” manager Alex Cora said. “There’s a lot of ways to make it to October, and now we’re back to point zero. We’re neutral. So we just got to keep playing well. We played well in New York, and we played well against Tampa. These two games here were pretty solid.”
Dobbins faced the Yankees on Sunday in New York, allowing three runs over five innings and picking up the win. Six days later, he was back on the mound to face the same lineup. Not only had he never faced the same team twice through the first eight starts of his career, but he also was doing so in back-to-back starts.
It required a bit of an adjustment to his game plan.
Dominant Dobbins. pic.twitter.com/gxP2c1nwKQ
— Red Sox (@RedSox) June 15, 2025
Dobbins relies mostly on his four-seamer, throwing it 40 percent of the time. Last week in New York, he leaned on a four-seamer and slider combination while mixing in his curveball and using his sweeper and splitter judiciously.
On Saturday, he still leaned on his four-seamer and slider but incorporated his sweeper much more while picking his spots with his splitter and curveball.
“The main thing was I knew I needed to execute better,” he said. “The first time around, I had a lot of 0-2, 1-2 counts, and I just wasn’t able to get a strikeout or put ’em really away. We found a couple holes in my game. Trust those and have some pitches that we’ve been working on that we kind of broke out tonight, and we’re getting there with them. So, I think that added a big part.”
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Like Garrett Crochet the night before, a key to Dobbins’ success was silencing Aaron Judge. Crochet pounded Judge with 17 four-seamers in 21 pitches thrown over four at-bats, resulting in three strikeouts and a homer.
Dobbins used a different formula with an off-speed-heavy approach.
In his first at-bat, Dobbins fell behind Judge 2-0 on a slider and sweeper, then came back with another sweeper and a slider before getting Judge to strike out on a curveball.
In the third inning, Dobbins started with a curveball, went to his splitter and four-seamer — the only four-seamer he’d throw to Judge on the night — then got him to strike out again on the curveball.
In the sixth, Dobbins battled Judge for seven pitches and won again. He went splitter, slider, splitter, then back to his curveball twice before a slider and another curveball. By that point, Judge had timed up the curveball but didn’t catch enough of it, hitting a cue shot down the third-base line. Marcelo Mayer made a nice backhanded pick and fired across his body for the forceout.
“Crochet has an electric fastball,” Dobbins said. “I can throw it hard, but the shape isn’t quite as elite. So we knew I had better weapons to go at (Judge) with. So, I felt like we did a good job of keeping a balanced attack throughout the order.”
Dobbins has had trouble when facing a lineup the third time through, but Cora trusted him in the sixth, and Dobbins prevailed with a strikeout of Trent Grisham, followed by groundouts from Judge and Ben Rice.
“The stuff was good, and the (Yankees’) swings weren’t great,” Cora said of his decision to leave Dobbins in. “But then in the sixth, there were some sliders there that backed up, and the pitch count, for where he’s been the last month, it didn’t make sense to push him.”
Dobbins finished with six scoreless innings, allowing two hits and a walk while striking out five. He threw 82 pitches, 52 for strikes, and registered seven swings-and-misses.
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The Yankees battled back against Boston’s bullpen, but catcher Carlos Narváez stalled a potential rally by picking off Jasson Domínguez in a key spot to end the seventh. The Red Sox had taken an early lead on an error and padded it with RBI doubles from Trevor Story and Romy González and a sacrifice fly from Mayer.
“I think what makes this one more satisfying is that we won the series and we’re building momentum,” Dobbins said. “We’re crawling back into this race where there’s a lot of season left. We’re building momentum for the rest of the year. And that’s what’s more satisfying to me.”
With Max Fried on the mound Sunday for the Yankees, the Red Sox will have a tall task ahead of them, but they feel like they’re in a better spot overall.
“Now it’s important what we do next,” Cora said. “That’s the whole thing. We got a big game tomorrow, obviously, against another tough lefty. We’ll see what we do. And then a long road trip. So, we’re playing well, we’re playing good baseball, we’re pitching. And like I said before the game, if we pitch, we should be OK.”
(Photo: Brian Fluharty / Getty Images)
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