Red Sox lose talented rookie Hunter Dobbins to ACL tear

Gabrielle Starr, Boston Herald on Jul 12, 2025

Published in Baseball

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BOSTON — On Saturday, the Red Sox made official what Hunter Dobbins knew as soon as it happened:

The injury that forced the rookie right-hander out of Friday night’s game after just 1 2/3 innings is a right ACL tear.

“I’ve torn my ACL on this knee before, and it was the same feeling,” explained Dobbins, as he stood in the clubhouse Saturday afternoon. “High school football. Guy dove at my knees just trying to make a tackle.”

Friday was Dobbins’ first start since June 20. He’d spent the intervening weeks on the injured list with an elbow strain. In the second inning, he rushed to cover first base but was in apparent discomfort after making the out, which prompted manager Alex Cora and a trainer to rush out of the dugout.

“When it happened, I thought something minor, but talking to him, he felt it right away,” Cora said.

Dobbins initially struggled to put weight on his right leg, but the group spoke near first base, then walked over to the mound together to see what a warmup pitch would feel like. The experiment failed, and they accompanied the visibly emotional rookie off the field.

“Kind of some denial went into it, tried to throw that warmup pitch, felt the same sensation again so at that point, I knew what it was,” Dobbins said. “(To) know that you’re done for the year, it’s pretty tough.”

The Red Sox placed him on the 15-day injured list Saturday morning. Fellow righty Richard Fitts, whom they optioned earlier this week in order to add Dobbins back to the rotation, was recalled from Triple-A Worcester. The 15-day designation is essentially meaningless, though; Dobbins’ season is over.

“(I’m) pretty disappointed,” he said. “I want to be out there helping these guys win. You know, last night, outside of the first batter of the game, felt like I had some really good stuff. It was kind of the best I’ve felt in a while, so to kind of go down like that and know I’m out for the year, is pretty tough.”

In the immediate aftermath, Dobbins was instructed to walk around to the best of his ability, maintain range of motion in his leg, and keep it elevated to avoid swelling. Doing so will allow him to undergo surgery as soon as possible, he said. There’s no concern about the fact that it’s a repeat injury, either.

“It’s not like the elbow or shoulder or anything like that,” he said. “(I) plan on being back to full strength next yea r… It’s going to fuel me. In my head I have Opening Day next year kind of circled. Again, whether or not that’s realistic or not, I don’t know, but that’s my goal.”

Dobbins made his big-league debut on April 6 and has made the fifth-most starts on the pitching staff. He was 4-1 on the season, including a memorable pair of back-to-back wins against the Yankees in June.

“It’s tough,” said Cora. “He put himself on the map. He did a good job for us … We know we have a good one. He’s a good big-league pitcher, and whenever he comes back, he gonna help us.”

Hours after Dobbins exited the game, the Red Sox won their eighth game in a row, on a walk-off two-run homer by Ceddanne Rafaela. For the night’s starting pitcher, it was a singularly odd moment.

“Probably outside of the big disappointment of not being able to pitch again this year, missing the home run last night was pretty tough,” Dobbins said. “I was actually in the MRI machine and they were giving me score updates in between each one, and then right after the last one, they’re like, ‘We think you’d like to hear this: y’all just won by a walk-off,’ so that was pretty cool to hear that the guys picked me up that way.”

Having to lay still in the machine in that moment was “pretty tough,” Dobbins said. “I was pretty excited. I mean, this team battles. We fight. We have each other’s back, so that was a lot of fun to watch, and just kind of almost a fitting way to win that game.”

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