Red Sox to place two-time All-Star on IL

The Red Sox are placing right-hander Walker Buehler on the 15-day injured list due to inflammation in his right shoulder, manager Alex Cora announced (link via MLB.com’s Ian Browne). The club is hopeful that it’ll only be a minimum stint for the right-hander, who’d been slated to start on Saturday. MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo reported earlier in the day that righty Hunter Dobbins is expected to get Saturday's start. He made his big league debut last month and has looked sharp through two MLB starts.

Buehler signed a one-year, $21.05M deal with the Red Sox in the offseason, matching the value of the qualifying offer, which the Dodgers neglected to put forth when he reached the open market. It was a relatively sizable bet on a pitcher who looked lost for much of the 2024 season — his first full year back from Tommy John surgery — before some short but memorable postseason heroics for Los Angeles.

So far, Buehler’s tenure with the Red Sox has produced pedestrian results. He’s sitting on a 4.28 ERA with better strikeout and walk rates than he had in 2024 but also a career-low 93.5 mph average fastball. And while his 20.7% strikeout rate and 6.4% walk rate are indeed improvements on last year’s marks (18.6 K%, 8.1 BB%), that strikeout rate is a far cry from his peak 29.2% when he was pitching like a bona fide ace and Cy Young contender.

Buehler heads to the injured list just days after Boston finally got right-hander Lucas Giolito healthy and into a regular-season game. Giolito required UCL surgery last spring and missed all of the 2024 season and the first month of 2025 as a result. The Sox have also been without Kutter Crawford (knee) all year and have only received two starts from Brayan Bello.

Even with all the injuries, Red Sox starters rank 14th in the majors with a solid 3.91 ERA. Ideally, Buehler will rejoin the starting staff in a couple of weeks, but if he requires a bit of a lengthier stay, Dobbins has looked up to the task of filling in. The 2021 eighth-rounder pitched 125 2/3 innings of 2.61 ERA ball between Double-A and Triple-A last year. In 11 major league frames this season, he’s held opponents to three earned runs (2.45 ERA) on 11 hits and a pair of walks with 11 strikeouts. In Dobbins’ most recent Triple-A start, he held the Mets’ top affiliate to a run, four hits and two walks with three punchouts across six innings.