For the fifth game in a row, a Red Sox starting pitcher gave his team at least six innings.
Six scoreless innings, to be precise. And with that as the foundation, Boston narrowly hung on for a 4-3 victory and their third consecutive series win against an American League East rival.
“I think at the end of the day, if we pitch we’re gonna be fine,” manager Alex Cora said before Saturday night’s game with the Yankees. “If we continue to be consistent the first five, six innings, we should be OK.”
Before Saturday, Hunter Dobbins had pitched in 10 big-league games since his April 6 debut and faced a new opponent each time. The Yankees became his first-ever repeat customers, and he served it up even better the second time around. Facing the team he now famously told the Herald he’d sooner retire than ever play for, Dobbins blanked the Yanks through the end of the sixth, struck out five, and yielded just two hits and one walk.
“Really good. Good fastball, secondary pitches were great,” Cora assessed. “He gave us more than enough.”
According to Elias Sports, Dobbins is the first Red Sox rookie to pitch at least six scoreless innings with two or fewer hits allowed since Clay Buchholz – who happened to be in attendance – on Sept. 1, 2007. Dobbins is the first Red Sox rookie to do so against the Yankees since Scott Taylor in relief on Oct. 3, 1992, and Dana Kiecker as a starter on Sept. 21, 1990.
And on a mere 82 pitches.
“That was a lot of fun,” Dobbins said. “I mean, getting to go out there after we won last night, knowing we could win the series tonight. The crowd was amazing. It always is here. But to be able to perform for our guys like that, you know, go six strong and for (Alex Cora) to have the faith in me to go and face the top of their lineup for the third time, it meant a lot.”
“I love being able to perform and get those wins for the fans here,” Dobbins added. “They deserve it. It’s a great city, passionate fan base, and so being able to get those wins, especially twice in one week, means a lot.”
To be ready for his second consecutive start against the Yankees, Dobbins and the pitching staff pinpointed a key area of need.
“The first time around had a lot of 0-2, 1-2 counts and I just wasn’t able to get a strikeout or put them really away, so I knew I needed to execute better,” the rookie explained. “We found a couple holes in my game, addressed those, and I 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 had a big part in it.”
In Dobbins’ first career start against the Yankees, Aaron Judge homered off him twice. This time, Dobbins struck out the Yankees captain in each of his first two at-bats. Unlike Boston’s ace lefty Garrett Crochet, who blew Judge away with what Dobbins described as his “electric fastball” and got him to strike out in each of their first five battles this season, Dobbins kept the slugger guessing with off-speed pitches.
“I can throw it hard, but the shape isn’t quite as elite, so we knew we had better weapons to go at him with,” Dobbins said of his own fastball.
Carlos Rodón’s second of back-to-back starts against Boston was an improvement, too, but only slightly. After getting tagged for five earned runs last weekend, he yielded four runs, three earned, on seven hits, two walks, and struck out four in five innings.
After coming through with the walk-off hit in the 10th inning of Friday night’s series opener, Carlos Narváez got Boston on the board immediately on Saturday. His first-inning single, combined with an error by the shortstop, gave the Red Sox a 1-0 lead.
Wearing their original City Connect uniforms, the Boston bats tallied just seven hits, were 2 for 10 with runners in scoring position and left five men on base, but what they did was enough. Trevor Story collected a pair of doubles and drove in their second run in the fourth inning. Batting in the leadoff spot, Rob Refsnyder began the contest with a first-pitch double, then hit a first-pitch single in his next at-bat. Romy Gonzalez’s fifth-inning double extended Boston’s lead to 3-0, and Marcelo Mayer’s sixth-inning sacrifice fly plated their fourth and final run.
“We need Trevor,” Cora said, “and it’s not a challenge, it’s the reality of it. And he knows it, too. And the way he’s playing defense, the way he’s swinging the bat, the way he’s running the bases, he’s a very dynamic player. … He’s been outstanding for us.”
Though Dobbins was only at 69 pitches after the fifth, Cora didn’t want to overdo it with the rookie, who hadn’t thrown more than 72 pitches in a game since May 14. The defense picked him up; Mayer made several slick plays, including fielding a pair of tricky balls and making clean throws to first to complete a 1-2-3 sixth inning.
Few things are certain in baseball, though, and the efficacy of the Boston bullpen is rarely among them.
After Dobbins’ dominant outing, the Yankees quickly began to chip away at Boston’s 4-0 lead. Luis Guerrero threw 17 pitches, and only eight of them were strikes. He recorded one out in the seventh, allowed New York’s first run to score, and left behind runners on first and second for Justin Wilson, who promptly gave up an RBI single to Austin Wells.
A dicey top of the seventh resolved itself in the usual chaotic Red Sox/Yankees fashion. With Boston’s lead cut to two and runners on first and second with two outs, Narváez threw to Story, who gunned to Mayer to catch left-fielder Jasson Domínguez stealing third.
“That’s huge,” Cora said with a chuckle, adding that he needed to watch the sequence again and discuss it with Story. “Huge play in that situation.”
In the ninth, Greg Weissert allowed the Yankees to pull within a run before successfully converting the save to bring Boston back to .500 (36-36).
“Our goal was to get back to .500,” Cora said. “Now we’re back to point-zero, we’re neutral. So we just gotta keep playing well.”
“We’re crawling back into this race,” Dobbins said. “There’s a lot of season left. We’re building momentum for the rest of the year.”
The Red Sox have won four consecutive games for the first time since April 15-19 and are back at .500 for the first time since May 24. They’ve won six of their last seven games and seven of their last nine.
“Now it’s important what we do next,” Cora said.
These rivals have their series finale at 1:35 p.m. on Sunday. The Red Sox then head out on a lengthy west coast road trip to Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles before returning to Fenway on June 27.
