Dobbins beats Yankees once more in one other high quality begin for Purple Sox

Red Sox

Dobbins has the second lowest ERA among Boston’s starting pitchers.

Hunter Dobbins didn’t hold back his feelings about the Yankees prior to his first career start against the Red Sox rivals last weekend. New York made him pay for those comments, tagging him for a pair of home runs, although Dobbins got the last laugh in the form of an 11-7 win.

On Saturday night, Dobbins pitched even better and helped lead the Red Sox to another win over their heated foes, 4-2.

This time around, Dobbins went six scoreless innings, giving up only two hits while striking out five and walking one. He executed his job to near perfection and gave Boston a cushion to survive the final three innings at Fenway Park.

“Really good,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said of Dobbins’s performance. “Good fastball, secondary pitches were great. We were talking about it before the game, that he hasn’t gone more than 80 [pitches] in a while, so you have to be careful there, but he gave us more than enough.”

While Boston’s starting rotation has been inconsistent this season outside of Garrett Crochet, Dobbins is turning into one of the better surprise players on the team. He worked his way into the rotation due to injuries to a handful of starters, but at this point it would be difficult to keep him from getting starts even once Boston returns to full health.

Dobbins has the second-lowest ERA (3.74) among all Red Sox starters; Crochet’s 2.24 ERA is far and away the lowest. And his sound start on Saturday was enough to land Dobbins in rarified air among Red Sox rookie pitchers.

Dobbins is the 11th Boston pitcher all-time to throw six or more scoreless innings with two or fewer hits in their first 11 games. No Red Sox rookie has accomplished that since Clay Buchholz in 2007 (his famous no-hitter).

While Dobbins isn’t necessarily a full-fledged member of the rotation yet, he’s trending in that direction and giving the Red Sox everything he can whenever he’s called upon. Cora drew comparisons between his current trajectory and a fellow breakout starter for Boston.

“[Kind of like] in ’21 what Tanner [Houck] did. He pitched once a week, he was good for us, we’d bring him up for doubleheaders, I remember, and he was amazing,” Cora said. “[Dobbins] is very similar. You start looking at the numbers, the WHIP is down, the ERA is coming down. He doesn’t walk people, he attacks. He was under control the whole night.”

Like Dobbins, the Red Sox as a whole are trending in the right direction. Saturday’s win brought them back to .500 and back in the mix in the AL East. Once all of Boston’s pitchers are healthy, having Dobbins in the organization as a reliable extra arm wherever Cora needs him will be handy late in the season.