BOSTON — Detroit Tigers right-hander Jack Flaherty took a no-hitter into the seventh inning against the Boston Red Sox on Thursday night at Fenway Park.

Flaherty lost the no-hitter with one out in the seventh inning, the result of Rob Refsnyder winning a nine-pitch battle by hitting a line-drive single into left field.

"I always know," Flaherty said. "When a thing like that goes on, I always know, so for me, no nerves or anything ever gets involved. I knew when we gave up the hit."

Thanks to Flaherty, the Tigers took down the Red Sox, 5-0, in the first of four games in the series.

It was a brilliant 104-pitch performance.

"I've seen a pretty good version of Jack Flaherty," manager A.J. Hinch said, "but this might be his best game just given the ballpark, the atmosphere and then obviously the variety of pitches that he needed to throw."

Flaherty, who signed a one-year, $14 million contract in free agency, allowed just one hit and one walk across 6⅔ scoreless innings. He racked up nine strikeouts along the way, finishing those hitters with six fastballs and three sliders.

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He lowered his ERA to 3.46 in his 11th start.

"I hate that guy that says like, it's not great stuff, but I was able to do it," Flaherty said. "But I didn't feel like I had any command of it. I didn't know where my slider was going. I threw a couple of good ones, and I found the outside corner to lefties a couple of times, but they hit the balls at guys."

The Tigers (28-28) have won five of their last six games.

Felt like something special

First baseman Spencer Torkelson showcased possibly the best defensive play of his career to open the sixth inning. Vaughn Grissom tried to sneak a ground ball into the right field, but Torkelson traveled to his right and made a back-handed diving stop to keep the ball in the infield. He threw sidearm from a knee to Flaherty, who covered first base.

"There's a lot of ways to help us win," Hinch said of Torkelson, who finished 0-for-4 with three strikeouts at the plate. "That was a play that was awesome."

The Red Sox put pressure on Flaherty in the seventh inning, beginning with Wilyer Abreu working Flaherty for six pitches before striking out on a slider below the strike zone.

The next batter forced Flaherty to battle for nine pitches.

On the ninth pitch, Refsnyder smoked a middle-middle 94.5 mph fastball into left field to break up Flaherty's no-hit bid with one out in the seventh.

"He had a good at-bat," catcher Carson Kelly said. "He kept fouling off some good pitches, got a ball over the middle of the plate and put a good swing on it."

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Flaherty got Rafael Devers to fly out for the second out in the seventh, but once that happened, Hinch climbed out of the dugout and removed him from the game. Flaherty received an applause from Red Sox fans on his walk back to the dugout.

Right-handed reliever Alex Faedo induced an inning-ending groundout to end the seventh inning.

For his 104 pitches, Flaherty unloaded 51 fastballs (49%), 31 sliders (30%), 21 curveballs (20%) and one changeup (1%). He generated 15 whiffs on 48 swings — a 31.3% whiff rate — with five fastballs, seven sliders and three curveballs.

The Red Sox missed seven times on 12 swings against Flaherty's MLB-best slider.

"Just keep making pitches and hope that as the game goes on, you start to find it," Flaherty said. "I found a couple of good sliders. I found some fastballs that we were able to use at the top of the zone. I was able to find the outside corner as the game went on. It's a game of adjustments, and after the first time through the order, the stuff got better."

Three homers over Green Monster

Both starting pitchers — Flaherty for the Tigers, right-hander Nick Pivetta for the Red Sox — took no-hit bids into the fifth inning.

"It looked like he had a little bit of everything," Hinch said of Pivetta. "His fastball is really good. He had a couple of different breaking balls. He never really conceded to anything good to hit. Righties were saying it was starting at them and finishing off the plate. That's incredible movement."

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Akil Baddoo, recently recalled from Triple-A Toledo, broke up Pivetta's no-hit bid with one out in the fifth inning, launching a solo home run over the 37-foot-high Green Monster in left field.

Baddoo slugged the first pitch he saw in the plate appearance, a down-and-away cutter, to the opposite field. It was one of four cutters thrown by Pivetta, and it marked Baddoo's first homer of the season in his fourth game.

The Tigers extended their lead from 2-0 to 4-0 in the eighth inning when Riley Greene — who entered Thursday hitting .171 with a .483 OPS in his past 21 games — pushed a two-run home run over the Green Monster. He jumped a first-pitch cutter from right-handed reliever Chris Martin.

It was Greene's first homer since May 6, as well as his second opposite-field homer of the season.

"I don't care about the pull side when you hit it over the Monster," Hinch said. "You gotta hit where the ball needs to go, and his strength is always going to be that type of swing."

"It's very important," Greene said. "It just shows that my approach still works."

Greene has a team-high 10 home runs in 55 games this season.

Moments later, Gio Urshela recorded his first home run in 369 days, going back to May 27, 2023, with a solo home run over Green Monster — the fan fumbled the ball back into the field of play — for a 5-0 advantage with two outs in the eighth inning.

Strikeout king

Pivetta came a strike away from breaking a Red Sox record set by legendary pitcher Roger Clemens. With two strikes, Greene grounded out to the second baseman to open the fourth inning.

The weak groundout snapped Pivetta's strikeout streak at eight batters, which tied Clemens' record set in 1986.

Here's how Pivetta achieved eight strikeouts in a row: Mark Canha (swinging strike, sweeper) and Urshela (called strike, fastball) in the first inning, Colt Keith (called strike, sweeper), Baddoo (called strike, fastball) and Torkelson (swinging strike, sweeper) in the second inning, Javier Báez (swinging strike, sweeper), Kelly (swinging strike, sweeper) and Matt Vierling (swinging strike, sweeper) in the third inning.

Clemens set the Red Sox record, which Pivetta tied, on April 29, 1986, the day he became the first of three MLB pitchers to strike out 20 batters in nine innings.

Pivetta, though, finished with nine strikeouts in 5⅓ innings. He allowed two runs on three hits and two walks, throwing 92 pitches. The Tigers chased him and took a 2-0 lead in the sixth inning with Canha's RBI single, set up by Kelly's leadoff triple.

Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.

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Next up: Red Sox

Matchup: Tigers (28-28) at Boston (28-28).

First pitch: 7:10 p.m. Friday; Fenway Park, Boston.

TV/radio: Apple TV (streaming only); WXYT-FM (97.1).

Probable pitchers: Tigers — RHP Kenta Maeda (2-1, 5.80 ERA); Red Sox — RHP Tanner Houck (4-5, 1.90).

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers' Jack Flaherty flirts with no-hitter in win vs. Red Sox