ST. PETERSBURG -- The rivals have squared off in New York five times already and twice in London, but in a scheduling quirk, Thursday night will mark the first time the Yankees have played the Red Sox at Fenway Park this season. It is the first time since the strike-shortened season of 1981 that it has taken the Yankees this long to play in Boston.
And it comes not a minute too soon for a Boston team that needs to do two things in this four-game showdown.
The first is to play better against the Yankees. New York owns a 6-1 record in head-to-head competition, outscoring the Sox, 56-36.
The second is to play better at Fenway, where the Red Sox are a disappointing 24-25 on the season.
Both of those records have had an impact on Boston trailing the Yankees by 10 games in the American League East entering action on Wednesday.
“We know what’s coming over the weekend,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “It should be fun. It’s going to be long. Hopefully no rain delays or whatever. Finally we see them at home. It’s kind of weird.”
The Red Sox have Rick Porcello, Andrew Cashner, Eduardo Rodriguez and Chris Sale lined up for the weekend. Their task is to stop an offense that has crushed the competition this season.
“They’re playing well,” said Cora. “You can’t hide it. It will be fun playing them this weekend. I’ve been saying all along, DJ [LeMahieu] is a game-changer for them. It’s the approach, going the other way, playing defense. I got to meet the guy at the All-Star Game. He’s very professional, very quiet. You can tell that he understands the game. It’s one of those signings that not too many people talk about, but I think it changed the way that they approached their at-bats.”
The Yankees have Masahiro Tanaka, James Paxton, CC Sabathia and Domingo German scheduled to pitch the four games. Though Cora has yet to label his team “savages” -- as Aaron Boone famously did last week during a rant at an umpire -- he thinks pretty highly of his team’s offense, which entered the day leading the Majors in runs while being tied for the top spot in batting average and on-base percentage.
The four games against the Yankees will start a stretch in which the Sox play 14 of their next 18 contests at home.
“You know what, I was looking at the schedule yesterday and I said, ‘We’re home for [almost] two weeks,’” Cora said. “That’s cool. I’ve been saying all along, since London, I haven’t seen my kids, honestly. Now it’s cool. We get into a routine. We’ve got a few series, I think it’s four [out of five], so maybe this is the time we feel finally that we’re in Boston for a while and we get hot at home.”