The Yankees beat the Red Sox 4-1 on Wednesday night at Fenway Park, and Boston’s offense looked every bit like a club searching for a break. Ceddanne Rafaela, back in the leadoff spot for the first time since early in the 2024 season, went 0 for 4 and struck out three times. Andruw Monasterio, used as the designated hitter, also finished 0 for 3.
The loss dropped Boston to 9-15, a start built on the worst kind of numbers for a team that expected more. The Red Sox entered the night with the lowest OPS in the American League at.643, had hit only 13 home runs and had fewer stolen bases than all but three teams. Manager Alex Cora said he was “just trying everything to get going,” and later put it more bluntly: “We haven’t hit. We haven’t hit. That’s the reality of it.”
Fenway Park was not packed for the first two games of the series either, with crowds of 34,391 and 34,049, both well short of sellouts. That matters because this is still baseball’s most recognizable rivalry, but it has carried less heat since the teams met in last fall’s American League Wild Card Series. The Yankees won that series after Garrett Crochet took Game 1 in the Bronx, and Boston’s own regular season was supposed to change after that. Instead, the Red Sox went from 81 wins to 89, then spent the offseason making only cautious, moderately priced additions rather than the bigger swing many around the team expected.
Wednesday’s game fit that larger tension. Max Fried worked eight innings against the Red Sox, controlling a lineup that has now spent weeks offering too little contact, too little power and too few ways to manufacture runs. On Tuesday, Major League Baseball posted a graphic to mark the first Yankees-Red Sox game of the season, a reminder of how much history still surrounds these teams even when the games themselves feel flatter than they should.
For Boston, the next step is less about one rivalry loss than about whether the lineup can give Cora something sturdier than hopeful lineup shuffling. The manager has already tried different looks, and the results have not changed. Until the Red Sox start hitting, the rest of the season will keep asking the same question in different parks.
