Baseball’s Biggest Rivalry is Renewed as Red Sox Host Yankees

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Baseball’s Biggest Rivalry is Renewed as Red Sox Host Yankees

One of the fiercest rivalries in Major League Baseball—or for that matter any professional sport—will be renewed this weekend as the New York Yankees take on the Boston Red Sox at venerable Fenway Park. The Red Sox and Yankees first played each other in 1901 and have since squared off over 2,000 times in the past 110 years. The Red Sox and Yankees are the sports manifestation of the rivalry between New York City and Boston which takes many other forms as well. Historically, the Yankees have had the edge in the head to head series winning roughly 54% of the total meetings.

The 2011 season hasn’t exactly gotten off to a roaring start for the Red Sox—they dropped their first six games against Texas and Cleveland to enter the weekend 0-6. Not surprisingly, there’s a sense of dread bordering on panic among Boston sports fans but this may be more of an overreaction than anything else. On paper at least, the Red Sox have all of the tools to be competitive in the tough AL East. They need to get some improved performances from their starting pitching—particularly Josh Beckett and John Lackey who had substandard years in 2010—but they significantly upgraded their bullpen in the off season by acquiring closer Bobby Jenks and middle reliever Dan Wheeler. If the Sox struggle or fail to make the playoffs it’ll be a lack of execution, not a lack of talent.

Down in the Bronx, the situation is much better for the New York Yankees who enter the weekend series with a 4-2 record in their first six games. There is some concern about the Yankees’ starting pitchers after they failed to land Cliff Lee or another big game starter. Instead, the team has a rotation full of quality veterans but lacks an overpowering staff ace. CC Sabathia is their most consistent starter, but the team added solid pros Kevin Millwood, Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon. They did manage to upgrade their already solid bullpen by signing Raphael Soriano who’ll join Mariano Rivera for a scary 1-2 punch.

It’ll be interesting to see how this game is priced—the current listed starters for Sunday’s game are CC Sabathia for the Yankees and Josh Beckett for the Red Sox so we’re thinking Boston will be a short home favorite. Assuming we’re not laying a big favorite price with the road team it’s really hard to back the Red Sox at this point. These games are always competitive but until Boston’s form reverses we’ll look to play against them.