A Rivalry Renewed, with a Tantalizing Twist

In the American League East, it feels like the mid-2000’s all over again.

Despite their storied histories and recent successes, 2018 marks the first time since 2011 that both the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox have enjoyed lofty expectations going into Opening Day.

Sure, both teams made the postseason last year, but even Yankees fans, like me, admit that New York outperformed expectations. We thought it would be a transition year and they ended up one win away from a World Series. From the ALDS on, the Yankees were playing with house money.

They are underdogs no longer, if a team that ended 2017 with a 100-62 Pythagorean Win-Loss record ever was. Their bullpen, with Dellin Betances, David Robertson, Chad Green and Tommy Kahnle backing up flamethrowing closer Aroldis Chapman, is projected by FanGraphs as the best in baseball. And though it may not end up being the best ever, as MLB.com’s Mike Petriello pondered, it’s certainly scary. Their starting rotation is ranked 7th overall by FanGraphs – impressive considering it’s probably the Bombers’ weakest link.

To understand how otherworldly the Yankees offense is shaping up to be, consider this: Didi Gregorius, who was good for 3.9 WAR in 2017, is likely to bat sixth in this order. Their batters are projected for 27.2 WAR. Rookie skipper Aaron Boone’s biggest challenge in managing this lineup is how to break up his three right-handed sluggers in Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez. That’s a hell of a problem to have.

The Red Sox’s talent is more evenly distributed. Their starting rotation is very good, with Chris Sale better than any pitcher the Yankees can feature. Joe Kelly and Craig Kimbrel are back in the tail-end of the bullpen, which last year ranked second in the majors in ERA and third in FIP. They’re projected to be the ninth best pen in baseball, and the fourth best in AL. Save for perhaps catcher Christian Vazquez, there isn’t an easy out in the lineup and, even if new slugger J.D. Martinez is the DH most games, the Red Sox outfield of Jackie Bradley Jr., Mookie Betts and Andrew Benintendi would be the best in the American League, if not all of baseball, had the Yankees not acquired Stanton during the offseason.

The revamped and reinforced rosters have renewed what I consider to be the greatest rivalry in the history of sports, and what fans of teams other than the Yanks and Bosox consider to be, at best, a zombie nuisance that simply will not die.

Last month marked 99 years since Red Sox owner Harry Frazee traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees to finance a play called No, No, Nanette. The play was pretty good; the player was pretty great. The ensuing 85 years saw the Yankees win 26 World Championships, the Red Sox none. Along the way, Boston managed to lose in ways that would convince the otherwise sane people of New England that their team had been cursed by the hard-hitting, even harder partying son of a Baltimore bartender.

For Boston, even rare bright spots were dimmed by Yankees glory. In 1941, Ted Williams hit .406… while Joe DiMaggio put together an unprecedented 56-game hitting streak. That’s like throwing a no-hitter the same day the opposing pitcher throws a perfect game.

But this pent-up frustration — and Yankees fans’ NYC-salute response to it — took the discord between these two teams to levels unrivaled in baseball once, in 2004, it was finally turned to euphoria following, fittingly, the greatest comeback in major league postseason history. The tension had been building to that moment, with Pedro Martinez beating up a septuagenarian Yankees coach in 2003 and Alex Rodriguez forgetting that catchers masks hurt when you punch them in 2004.

Suddenly, the Red Sox and Yankees were on equal footing, and responded by further escalating a payroll-busting arms race that saw each win rings while their best players used steroids — turning fans of both teams into finger-pointing hypocrites and deepening the disgust between two increasingly similar organizations. We have seen the enemy, and they are us.

There is some arch-nemesis animosity going on here. That’s why almost any list of baseball’s all-time most heated rivalries is headlined by Yankees vs. Red Sox. That’s why fans outside the northeast corridor see it as a rivalry, while Yankees and Red Sox fans call it The Rivalry.

And heading into 2018, The Rivalry has never been more compelling.

This year, the Return of the Rivalry will probably play out like its numerous prequels, including what felt like every season in the 2000s. If the script holds true, the Yankees and Red Sox will separate themselves from the rest of the division by June and, from there, proceed to bludgeon each other for the AL East crown all summer long.

But unlike in years past, this time the regular season takes on heightened importance. Because unlike in say, 2005, the runner-up in the AL East won’t simply waltz into the ALDS. Instead, this is the first time in The Rivalry’s revival that second place means a one-game, do-or-die pit stop en route to the tournament proper.

Welcome to Yankees vs. Red Sox 3.0, two Wild Card playoff format edition. Finish second, and risk playing golf nine innings later.

A Top-heavy Division in a Top-heavy League

That the Yankees and Red Sox will each qualify for the postseason — one as a division winner, the other as a Wild Card — is extremely likely, considering both their talent level and the shape of the rest of the American League.

Going into the season, FanGraphs has put the Yankees’ projected win total at 95, with the Red Sox’s set at 93. According to oddsmakers, the only other team in the AL East likely to finish above .500 is the Toronto Blue Jays, who FanGraphs projects will win 86 games — perhaps generous considering they’ll need to play the Yankees and Red Sox 19 times apiece.

Regardless, FanGraphs has the Jays finishing third, seven games behind second-place Boston. Even if the Blue Jays meet these comparably favorable expectations, that’s a wide gap, and it’s based on the understandable assessment that the Yankees and Red Sox are significantly better than their divisional opponents — even though the projected third-place team would qualify for the playoffs as the second Wild Card, edging out the Los Angeles Angels at a projected 84 wins.

So yes, welcome to 2018, circa 2005. The chances of the Yankees and Red Sox not finishing the season atop the division seem miniscule. The Tampa Bay Rays and Baltimore Orioles are expected to win about 78 and 75 games, respectively.

And save for the anticipated division winners, the rest of the American League is a heaping tablespoon of meh. After the defending World Series champion Houston Astros (101 projected wins) and Central Division incumbent Cleveland Indians (93 projected wins), the next best team in either division is the aforementioned Angels, at 84 wins. From there, also-rans like the Twins, Athletics and Mariners are bunched up around .500.

More than anything, what all this says is that there are a lot of mediocre teams out there, and almost as many terrible ones (AL Central, I’m looking at you).

In a league that has enjoyed some refreshing parity of late, punctuated by the small-market Royals winning the World Series in 2015, the heavyweights have once again sent the seesaw off kilter. The Cubs were long suffering, but built to contend, as were the Astros. Barring catastrophic injuries or unthinkable face-plants, four playoff spots in the American League are already spoken for; the National League is similarly unbalanced.

And though I’m sure fans outside the New York/New England Corridor are sick and tired of seeing the Yankees and Red Sox atop the standings, the second Wild Card has created an attractive win-win for baseball: The extra postseason spot adds sizzle for those who love The Rivalry, and added hope for those who loathe it. Let’s explore why.

Wild Thing

Since its inception in 2012, I’ve been a strong proponent of the second Wild Card. For one, it keeps more teams in the hunt longer, and in doing so, it helps keep a larger percentage of overall fans engaged throughout most or all of the lengthy season. In theory, it also limits the shameless, reverse-Robin Hood trade deadline shift of talent that typically occurs as the calendar approaches July 31.

And once the regular season ends, the one-and-done matchups between the two Wild Card winners in each league are the perfect way to start off the postseason. It’s like fast-forwarding to Game Seven right from the get-go — a terrific way to inject instant drama into a playoff tournament that, though shorter than that of many other sports, can still seem a bit drawn out.

But the real reason I love the second Wild Card is the same reason I hated the first Wild Card back in 1995 (even though it finally got Don Mattingly into the playoffs). The first Wild Card did little to penalize a second-place finish apart from forcing an extra away game. The second Wild Card corrected that mistake, and then some.

Think about it. Priority No. 1 for all teams, as they break camp and head north for Opening Day, is the same: win your division. There are four other teams in your immediate vicinity; finish ahead of them and you’re two rounds from the Fall Classic. Simple and clean.

And since that’s simple and clean, the rest should be difficult and messy. Until 2012, it really wasn’t.

Granted, winning the division held an even greater emphasis when Wild Card entries were limited to one team per league; fewer playoff teams will do that. The problem is that MLB didn’t know what to do with this lone second-place team other than advance it directly to the playoff tournament proper. That team  got off far too cheaply.

But now, the prospect of a six-month season abruptly ending due to one bad start or a team-wide mini-slump is appropriately unnerving. And even if you survive that coinflip-esque elimination game, the likelihood of losing your ace until Game Three of the subsequent series is a setback far greater than the previous, bare-minimum penalty of playing three out of five on the road (which, of course, the Wild Card winner still does in the Division Series anyway).

Some have argued that the Wild Card match-ups should be extended to a best-of-three series. The driving factor behind these arguments is fairness: In a game so nuanced that even cellar dwellers tend to take at least one game out of a typical three-game set with division leaders, a single-game showdown between two assumedly closely matched teams leaves too much to chance.

A best-of-three would, through a larger sample size, give the better team opportunities to differentiate itself from a lesser opponent and therefore advance. This makes some sense, especially in a game where the most important player – the starting pitcher – is different from game to game.

But in crying foul, the best-of-three argument misses a larger point: the one-game playoff is great exactly because it’s not fair. It’s a penalty for not winning your division as much as it is an opportunity to advance in spite of it. Don’t like it? Finish in first and avoid the whole mess.

And that’s exactly what the Yankees and Red Sox are telling themselves right now.

Hope and Horror: A Tale of Two Wild Cards

If we were back in 2005 with the current cast of teams, the refrain heard around the rest of the American League would be, “Here we go again.” With the other two divisions limited to one highly talented team apiece (the Astros in the West, the Indians in the Central), the runner-up in the AL East would seem a near shoo-in to win the lone Wild Card spot. Though stranger things have happened than a very good team underperforming or a dark horse surprising everyone (see: the 2015 Royals), it’s clear who the best four teams in the American League are. They’re likely going to the playoffs, and everyone else is going home.

But despite the risk of suffering through another heart attack-inducing WC game in the Bronx, I am glad this isn’t 2005. Maybe it’s that I’m 39, and the regular-season stakes in the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry haven’t been higher in my lifetime.

No more taking the foot off the pedal despite being just a couple games out of first with a full week to play. No more winning the division despite even records by way of a 10-9 head-to-head matchup, as the Yankees did in our beloved 2005 (“Why play a tiebreaker game?” the MLB rulebook seemingly shrugged, “they’re both going right into the playoff tournament anyway.”)

No more consolation prize that is equally as luxurious as the grand prize.

The single Wild Card setup was absolute nonsense. The most traditional game in American sports suddenly let second-place teams into the postseason… with no handicap whatsoever. I’m glad that format is dead, and fans around the rest of the American League should be as well.

Because this year, the second Wild Card gives 11 other teams what it wouldn’t have had back in 2005: hope.

For whatever 85ish-win team that ends up claiming the AL’s second Wild Card spot, that hope will have carried that club through the dog days of summer, down the stretch and into a position where it has at least a puncher’s chance of playing deep into October.

That team’s members will tell themselves something along these lines: “We’re about to play an elimination game on the road against a better, equally desperate team. And if we can get through that, who knows what else we can get through.”

For the fifth seed, the one-game pressure cooker is an opportunity to heat up, swallow any pre-postseason jitters and, should the ball bounce the right way for one game, carry that momentum into the ALDS.

One team’s hope is another team’s horror. In a year where there are probably just four 90-plus-win teams in the AL (and again, only one division with two such teams), whoever ends up with the number four seed is going to feel a bit cheated and more than a bit anxious. The pressure will be on to win a do-or-die Wild Card game while their opponent plays with house money.

It’s hard to see a scenario where that unwanted fourth seed doesn’t go to the Yankees or Red Sox. One or the other will face the extreme displeasure of trying to scratch out an extra victory while 95 percent of the country roots against them.

And should they advance, the new playoff format presents another new wrinkle to The Rivalry: the possibility of the Yankees and Red Sox squaring off in the best-of-five ALDS rather than the ALCS. Same great heart palpitations, 33 percent less room for error.

The single-Wild Card format disallowed divisional opponents facing each other in the first round. But now, the prospect of a Yankees vs. Red Sox Division Series showdown is yet another instance where the new playoff format is pleasing to all parties. Yankees Universe and Red Sox Nation get their blood lust, while the rest of the league has another chance to prevent the emotionally hungover victor from going to the World Series.

In all likelihood, in early October, one lucky American League team will win a whirlwind, all-expenses-paid trip for 25 to either Boston or New York. Once there, they’ll compete with a far less lucky team – the Yankees or Red Sox – for a chance at the grand prize: A luxurious World Series ring, suggested retail price: invaluable.

For fans of the AL’s also-rans, all this can only be yours if the Playoff Format is Right. And thankfully, it is.

It beats reruns from 2005, that’s for sure.