For the Yankees and Red Sox, the real season begins on Tuesday night

If I may offer an addendum to the classic "a series doesn't start until a team wins a game on the road" rule: A team's season doesn't really start until it plays its division rival for the first time.

The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox have gone through two very, very different opening months. The former won eight of its first 10 games behind arguably the best rotation in baseball — a rotation that doesn't even have Carlos Rodon and Gerrit Cole healthy yet — and now has another MVP candidate hitting in front of Aaron Judge. The latter lost its first three series and struggled so much that fans started openly begging their owner to sell the team.

And yet, as the two teams get set for the first of 13 meetings this season on Tuesday night at Fenway Park, you can throw literally all of the above out the window. How good or bad you've been for the first few weeks couldn't matter less — because all that past was mere prelude, and the dynamic of the AL East can shift dramatically based on what happens over the next few days.

The Yankees missed their chance to create real separation in the AL East

On paper, you'd assume that the Yankees should be running away with what's been a surprisingly mediocre division so far. The Red Sox can't get out of their own way, the Blue Jays have been ravaged by injuries and seemingly none of the Orioles' offseason moves have panned out as expected so far. The Yankees don't just have the best run differential in the AL East — they're more than 30 runs ahead of everybody else.

Which is why it's so frustrating for New York that they've been unable to put any real distance between themselves and the rest of the pack.

When the Yankees' bats are rolling like they were last season, they look like a freight train. But their lineup has been maddeningly inconsistent, disappearing for whole series at a time before busting out this past weekend in a sweep of the Royals. Those offensive droughts have led to a lot of close games, games that a frighteningly thin bullpen isn't equipped to win — which is how you wind up with a 2-6 record in one-run games so far.

New York can reasonably tell itself it's the class of this division right now. But the reality is that they're one game up on the Rays and only four up on both Boston and Toronto, despite how rough a start it's been for those latter two. If the bats stay hot against the Red Sox this week, it'll go a long way putting them in the catbird's seat. But their inability to take advantage of the dysfunction around them means that, if they lay a couple of eggs at Fenway Park, they'll suddenly be right back to square one — and all the good vibes of the past few weeks, all the optimism about the rotation and Ben Rice's breakout and this team's ultimate ceiling, will go out the window.

Now is the time for Red Sox stars to start playing like it

For Boston, on the other hand, it's a tremendous opportunity. You almost couldn't have come up with a worse start to the 2026 season, between Garrett Crochet getting knocked around and Sonny Gray and Ranger Suarez struggling to settle in and every preseason fear about this offense's lack of pop coming to fruition. Yet despite all that, here they are, just one good series away from breathing right down the Yankees' neck — and erasing a full month of mediocrity.

Even better is that the pitching matchups line up pretty well, especially to start.

• Tuesday: Connelly Early (1-0, 2.29) vs. Luis Gil (0-1, 7.00)
• Wednesday: Ranger Suarez (1-1, 3.22) vs. Max Fried (2-1, 2.97)
• Thursday: Brayan Bello (1-2, 6.75) vs. Cam Schlittler (2-1, 1.95)

Early, the team's top pitching prospect, sure looks like a star, and he's already familiar with the Yankees from his experience starting Game 3 of the AL Wild Card series last fall. (Early lost that battle, but he pitched much better than his final line.) He's off to an awesome start so far this season, and he matches up well with a Yankees offense that can struggle against lefties at times — he's certainly more trustworthy than Luis Gil on the other side, who has been the one squeaky wheel in New York's rotation to date. Granted, Schlittler against Bello feels like a similar mismatch on Thursday, leaving Wednesday's matchup between Suarez and Fried as the potential decider of this series.

A 162-game season offers plenty of second chances, and the Red Sox need to be viewing this as an opportunity for a reset. We won't see Crochet during this series, but he's far from the only big name who's off to a slow start. Roman Anthony and Jarren Duran have combined for just two homers so far this season. Caleb Durbin has been disastrous as the team's new third baseman. Trevor Story has made last year's resurgence look an awful lot like a dead-cat bounce. Marcelo Mayer is hitting below the Mendoza Line.

Willson Contreras and Wilyer Abreu aside, very few Boston hitters have met expectations so far. But all of that will be a distant memory if they pick this week as the week to wake up. The Yankees look like the best team in this division, but they're also far from invulnerable, and as bad as things have looked, the East is still very much there for the taking.

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