Major League Baseball marked the first Yankees-Red Sox game of the season on Tuesday with a social media graphic that said, “The rivalry will return tonight,” over photos of Aaron Judge and Roman Anthony. The timing felt familiar, but the edge around the series was harder to find than it used to be.
Judge brings the kind of gravity that still gives the matchup its national pull. He is a seven-time All-Star and a three-time MVP. Anthony, by contrast, was out of Boston’s lineup for Wednesday night’s 4-1 loss because of a sore back, another setback for the 21-year-old after a rough stretch at the plate. He was 2 for 15 with one RBI in his last five games, entered with 16 walks and was hitting.225 with a.686 OPS.
The Red Sox needed the offense to carry more weight, and it has not. They were 9-15, with the lowest OPS in the American League at.643 and only 13 home runs, the fewest in the league. Only three teams had fewer stolen bases. That production level has made the slow start easy to explain. It has also made the fixing look difficult.
Boston’s first two games of the series drew 34,391 and 34,049 to Fenway Park, both short of a sellout, even with the Yankees in town. That follows a 2024 season in which the Red Sox improved from 81 wins to 89 and still fell short of the postseason until a wild-card run pushed them into a fall meeting with New York. Garrett Crochet won Game 1 in the Bronx in that series before the Yankees took the next two games to advance.
This week, Crochet was not on the mound against the Yankees, and his 7.88 earned run average in five starts underscored how little Boston has gotten from a staff built to support a lineup that has not produced. The Red Sox also let Alex Bregman walk as a free agent, a cautious offseason rather than the kind of loud swing that can change the temperature of a rivalry overnight. The result has been a team that looks more familiar than fierce.
Manager Alex Cora tried a different look with Anthony sidelined, using Ceddanne Rafaela as a leadoff hitter for the first time since early in the 2024 season. Rafaela went 0 for 4 and struck out three times. Andruw Monasterio served as the designated hitter and went 0 for 3 against Max Fried, who pitched eight innings against the Red Sox. Boston keeps searching for a lineup that can carry it forward, and Cora did not hide how many levers he is willing to pull.
“Just trying everything to get going,” Cora said. “We haven’t hit. We haven’t hit. That’s the reality of it.”
For all the old theater attached to Yankees-Red Sox, the more immediate question is whether Boston can hit well enough to make the matchup feel meaningful again. The Yankees still matter because they are the Yankees, but in this division the Red Sox are looking more at the Blue Jays, Orioles or Rays for the games that could shape their season.
