Fenway Faceoff: New York Yankees Meet Boston Red Sox in Crucial AL East Battle
The New York Yankees will head to Beantown in the middle of September to take on their hated rivals, the Boston Red Sox, for a four-game series from September 11 to September 14. There’s always going to be a ridiculous amount of fanfare when these two teams play each other, given the historical rivalry they share.
A Bit of Context
That bitter feud dates back to the 1919 MLB season, when the Red Sox’ owner traded famed slugger Babe Ruth to the Yankees, triggering the ‘Curse of the Bambino’ as the Red Sox failed to win the World Series for the next 86 years, watching the Yankees become the flagship franchise of the sport with 26 championship wins in that same time.
The rivalry has taken many forms over the decade, whether it was Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams facing off in the 1940s or Derek Jeter and Manny Ramirez in the early 2000s. These days the face of the rivalry is players like Aaron Judge on the Yankees and Rafael Devers on the Red Sox, each one of the best players in the sport. While both teams have struggled this season—they play in an absolutely loaded division that could send as many as three or four teams to the playoffs, all while struggling with various inconsistencies themselves—that hasn’t taken any fuel from the fire of rivalry.
The two teams played two weekends ago, and Yankees’ ace Gerrit Cole seemed to accuse the Red Sox of cheating after they roughed him up during the game. You can be sure that Red Sox manager Alex Cora has turned Cole’s comments into bulletin board material, and it’ll make for a fascinating matchup in a couple weeks as the Red Sox try to keep their season alive… with the Yankees doing everything they can to put the final nail in Boston’s coffin.
These games are always going to be extremely tense and fiercely contended, but for fans who want to add an interactive layer to the experience, these Massachusetts Sports Betting apps will provide a gateway to engage with the action beyond the bleachers.
Sizing Up the Sox
As of the end of play on August 28, the Red Sox sit fourth in the AL East division with a 69-63 record. They’ve gone 5-5 over their past ten games, hovering 5.5 games out of the last Wild Card spot as teams from the AL West have gone on a surge since the All-Star Break to surpass them. The Red Sox’ pitching sits in the middle of the pack this season, with a 4.45 team ERA that ranks No. 19: while they have one of the better offenses in the league, scoring a hair under five runs per game, their arms haven’t been able to hold up their end of the bargain.
Things don’t look good now, but they still have an outside shot at a playoff chance, and we’ve seen teams catch fire down the stretch in the past, putting themselves in the postseason with an excellent final month. As it stands right now, I give the Red Sox the upper hand in this matchup: they’ll have something to play for other than pride, and they’ve been the better team this season, posting an 8-1 record against New York. I don’t see any reason that will change.
Looking at the Yankees
For the Yankees, the opposite is true. They have excellent pitching, but their bats haven’t been able to put them over the top. Cole looks like the frontrunner to win the Cy Young award this season, but Aaron Judge has played in just 77 games this season. Judge has been one of the best players in baseball when healthy this season, putting up an OPS+ of 176: the problem is he just hasn’t been healthy.
The hulking slugger missed nearly two months after tearing a ligament in his toe in early June, and the Yankees promptly began to free fall, going 29-44 since the beginning of that month. Right now, they sit at 63-68, 11 games out of the last Wild Card spot.
The Yankees have had to pay the piper in recent years, with massive contracts and trades they’ve swung like the Giancarlo Stanton deal failing to give them a good return on investment, so it’ll be interesting to see how the club responds in the wake of this lost season.
Their playoff hopes aren’t dead in the water yet, but they’re certainly on life support. Their last month of the season will be what they make of it. They could mail it in and hope for a better result next season, or they could dig deep and keep things interesting, putting up a fight to keep the Red Sox and other division rivals like the Toronto Blue Jays out of a playoff spot.