10 Degrees: An argument in favor of Yankees vs. Red Sox and why MLB's best rivalry is as fresh as it's been in years

Admittedly, advocating for the worthiness and enjoyment of a New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox series is a losing argument. To want more Yankees and Red Sox is to want Top 40 instead of music with a soul, movie instead of book, KFC instead of Hattie B’s. Really, it’s not a hate-us-cause-they-ain’t-us thing. It’s more a hate-you-cause-you’re-wealthy-and-powerful-and-successful-and-that-tends-to-get-obnoxious kind of situation. It is not fair. It is true.

And it is with that in mind, and with the Yankees and Red Sox scheduled to play a pair of series over the final two weeks of the 2018 season, that I urge the intransigent to reconsider. Toss aside biases. Abandon parochialism. Acknowledge that Top 40 music can earworm the haughtiest music snob, and that movies can themselves overflow with artistry, and that KFC can … OK, two outta three ain’t bad.

Just ask the Red Sox. They’ve won more than two-thirds of their games this season. And though the Yankees are nearly a dozen games behind them, they could very well finish the year with 100 wins themselves. And yes, plenty of the characteristic complaints apply when two teams spending well over $400 million combined on payrolls are cruising to playoff spots. Still, before automatically deeming the Yankees and Red Sox played out, consider:

They are fun to watch: The players, I mean. As much as pinstripes and pink hats warrant trigger warnings, surely you’re not vapid enough to allow apparel to obscure a team’s appeal. Not you, clear-headed, logical fan, who appreciates Mookie Betts for his overall excellence, Chris Sale for his otherworldliness, J.D. Martinez for the fact that his given name, Julio Daniel, was shortened to J.D., only to have it retconned into a new moniker: Just Dingers. And you couldn’t possibly look at a Yankees team that already has hit 240 home runs, and may well best the single-season record of 264, and frown upon it.

They want to fight one another: To call it disdain would be a bit strong, but the Yankees and Red Sox aren’t particularly fond of one another. As far as baseball brawls go, the one between Joe Kelly and Tyler Austin in April wasn’t half bad, and while Austin is now in Minnesota, the ill will hasn’t abated. Think of it this way: You could mitigate any guilt over tuning in to the Yankees and Red Sox by convincing yourself that you’re watching because there’s a non-zero chance you’ll see someone on the Yankees or Red Sox get punched.

They haven’t faced each other in the postseason in nearly a decade and a half: More on this later.

They play excellent baseball: Rarely, in the 2,228 previous meetings between the teams, have the combined talents of the Yankees and Red Sox been this obvious. These are two excellent teams that play good brands of baseball – something we hadn’t seen in about a decade until last year. The Red Sox’s whole is far greater than the sum of its parts, as their Pythagorean winning percentage and other expected predictors go. The Yankees’ lineup is vicious, their bullpen menacing, their baserunning exquisite and their fielding more than ample. If you don’t tune in Tuesday to see the first game of …

1. Red Sox at Yankees, then, it’s out of Alex Bregman-level pettiness – and not nearly as funny or warranted as Bregman still harboring a grudge three years later because the Arizona Diamondbacks passed on him with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft.

When it comes down to it, this is not an instead-of argument. It’s an in-addition-to case. This is not a request to abandon other teams or games or series to act as though the baseball world revolves exclusively around the Bronx. Or that Nathan Eovaldi-J.A. Happ, David Price-Luis Severino, Eduardo Rodriguez-Masahiro Tanaka matchups represent some sort of evolutionary leap in baseball. There’s a perfectly good argument to be made that either team facing the Houston Astros or Cleveland Indians or even the Oakland A’s would provide every bit as compelling of a series.

But there is history, and there is narrative, and saccharine or downright hyperbolic though they may be, the Yankees and Red Sox colliding now, with questions surrounding each, is fitting. New York may get star outfielder Aaron Judge back hitting for the first time in more than seven weeks. Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman is getting closer to returning, too. And the Yankees just summoned their best pitching prospect, Justus Sheffield, whom they had converted to relief toward the end of the minor league season to prepare him particularly for this moment.

Then there’s Boston praying that the left-side soreness that caused Betts’ removal from Sunday’s game is nothing. And that Sale, who hasn’t thrown more than five innings since before the trade deadline, is prepared for the grind of the playoffs. And that someone – anyone, please – will step up and take the eighth-inninng role. And that all the things a team with a 103-47 record worries about aren’t more than first-world problems.

The last time the teams met just after the trade deadline, Boston swept New York and began pulling away from the rest of the American League East. This is a series a long time coming, and while it’s got the most hoopla behind it, ignore …

2. Rockies at Dodgers at your own peril. This could be the series that decides the National League West title. Going into Sunday, the Dodgers led the division. Today, it’s the Rockies. In a season relatively bereft of division-title races – the Indians have clinched, the Red Sox and Atlanta Braves are about to and the Astros have a 4½-game lead over the A’s – the NL West is likeliest to go down to the final day.

St. Louis’ shutout of the Dodgers on Sunday night bumped Los Angeles into a tie with the Cardinals for the second wild card, imbuing the three-game series between the Dodgers and Rockies that starts Monday with that much more meaning. That the pitching matchups are as good as they are – Jon Gray and Hyun-Jin Ryu on Monday, Kyle Freeland and Clayton Kershaw on Tuesday and Tyler Anderson and Walker Buehler on Wednesday – only heightens the import.

The Dodgers may be the most confusing of the contenders: talented but frustrating, unbeatable some days and too beatable others, consistently inconsistent. The Rockies own by far the worst run differential of any contender at plus-one and are here nonetheless, 15 games over .500. They get to go to Dodger Stadium, where Los Angeles is only 39-36 this season, with a series win imperative as they’re the only contender facing better-than-.500 teams in every remaining game. This is the series that …

3. Phillies at Braves was supposed to be. They’ll face one another in four games at the end of the week that less than a month ago looked as if they might decide the division. Instead, it could be a coronation.

Even if the Braves aren’t exactly the 2015 Cubs, they’re at least a year ahead of schedule. This was supposed to be the season in which a few future core members graduated and showed what the future holds. Instead, Ronald Acuña Jr. is one of the best players in the game and putting up an all-time season for 20-year-olds, and nine players have reached double digits in home runs, and their pitching staff is littered with arms so live they’re a collective electrical hazard.

It’s enough to scare the bejesus out of the Phillies, who believed they were in a better position to contend this season before losing 10 of 14 to start the month and now recognize the NL East won’t necessarily run through Philadelphia. And that’s to say nothing of the two teams participating in the doesn’t-mean-a-whole-lot …

4. Mets at Nationals series later this week. Of the 10 series highlighted, this is the only one without playoff implications. What warrants its inclusion then?

No longer is every Jacob deGrom start about strictly the NL Cy Young Award. He may have that locked up, after Max Scherzer struggled in his last outing and Aaron Nola in his first three September starts put up a 5.60 ERA. Now it’s a question of how much voters will consider for Most Valuable Player a pitcher with an 8-9 record.

History says they won’t. But then history did not see pitchers as it does now, increasingly through the lens of numbers like Wins Above Replacement. By FanGraphs’ count, deGrom’s 7.7 WAR are nearly a full win ahead of Scherzer’s – and two better than the best position player, Christian Yelich. Baseball-Reference has deGrom trailing Scherzer and Nola – and more than two ahead of its position-playing leader and Yelich’s teammate, Lorenzo Cain.

Should the Nationals keep their rotation on turn instead of sticking with him on regular rest, Scherzer will start Friday against deGrom. DeGrom will be going for his 23rd consecutive quality start, a stunning figure made even better by the fact that quality does not begin to describe what he has done with the Mets’ flaccid offense and putrid defense supporting – in the falsest sense of the word – him.

His season line after a 12-strikeout performance Sunday: 202 innings, 147 hits, 45 walks, 251 strikeouts, 10 home runs, 1.78 ERA. He has been the best pitcher in baseball this season and the best player in the NL, and denying deGrom either piece of hardware would be wrong. A month ago, that seemed unlikely, but, of course, a month ago …

5. A’s at Mariners seemed like it was going to matter. Then the Mariners regressed, the A’s surged, and here they are, Oakland on the cusp of something unforeseen by even the sagest soothsayer, Seattle behind Tampa Bay in the wild-card standings, scheduled to play a series starting Sept. 24 by which time the A’s should have popped their Champagne.

As incredible as the A’s entire season has been, their second half is truly impressive for those who haven’t paid attention. Their third baseman, Matt Chapman, has been the single best player in baseball in the second half by both measures of WAR. His glove has been a known quantity since he debuted last season. His bat has been a revelation, and he leads the AL in post-All-Star Game total bases with 138. Second to him: Teammate Khris Davis, with 121. (After them: Yankees rookie Miguel Andujar, J.D. Martinez and – seriously – Randal Grichuk.)

The A’s are doing this with a rotation of Mike Fiers, Edwin Jackson, Trevor Cahill and Brett Anderson, which is to say they’re doing it mainly with their bullpen. It has thrown 77 1/3 innings of Oakland’s 124 innings in September and limited opponents to a .612 OPS. Essentially, the A’s relievers are turning every hitter this month into Dee Gordon. It’s no wonder they’re playing .600 baseball and threatening not just the Yankees, whom they trail by 1½ games for home-field advantage in the wild-card game, but the rest of the AL. That Oakland will have a scouting entourage at the …

6. Red Sox at Indians series at the end of this week still boggles the mind, though 150 games into the season, it’s too late to call it anything but real. The rest of the contenders in the AL have seen the Indians all season as real, as much because their AL Central competition revealed itself no match by the end of May. It’s been a slog to the division championship, and now that Cleveland has clinched that, it can go about readying itself for the defending champion Astros in the division series.

That means giving Josh Donaldson ample rest while feeding him the necessary at-bats to play like his MVP-winning self. And figuring out just how much it can rely on Andrew Miller, one of manager Terry Francona’s favorite postseason weapons who hasn’t looked like himself all injury-riddled season. Not to mention determining just how high leverage a situation he wants for reliever Cody Allen, who is now up to nine consecutive scoreless outings. Perhaps most important of all is the status of Trevor Bauer, erstwhile Cy Young contender, who could be close to returning from a broken leg sustained on a comebacker. He could start. Or Francona could deploy him as a fireman, the sort of challenge Bauer could relish.

All of the Red Sox’s remaining series teem with subplots, from their showdown with the Yankees to their temperature-taking with Cleveland to their hosting the Baltimore Orioles in what will be, at least record-wise, one of the most lopsided series in baseball history. The 43-106 Orioles are 59½ games behind Boston. The …

7. Astros at Orioles matchup that closes the season also could close the books on one of the worst years ever. Since baseball expanded to a 162-game schedule, only the 1962 Mets (40-120) and 2003 Detroit Tigers (43-119) have managed to fall short of 50 wins. To get to 50, the Orioles will need to go 7-6 over their last 13 games. In their 137 spans of 13 games this season, 7-6 is the best they’ve gone – and they’ve done it just four times.

Playing the Orioles is just one part of an Astros schedule with a .433 winning percentage, the easiest of all contenders. Should Houston not tool with its rotation between now and then, Justin Verlander is scheduled to start the first of the four-game series against Baltimore and continue to make his case for the AL Cy Young.

Verlander won his only Cy Young in 2011, the same season he won AL MVP. This is arguably his best season since. His 269-to-36 strikeout-to-walk ratio is far and away the best of his career. His 202 innings are tied with deGrom for second in baseball behind Scherzer’s 206 2/3. The only ding on Verlander’s résumé are the 28 home runs he has allowed, tied for the eighth most in baseball and contributor to a 2.67 ERA, which is well over half a run higher than Sale’s 1.92, Blake Snell’s 2.03 and Bauer’s 2.22. He also has thrown 52 more innings than Sale, 38 more than Snell and 36 more than Bauer, and those innings totals could differentiate him.

It’s the time of year, after all, when separation is imperative, and the …

8. Brewers at Cardinals series at the beginning of next week could give Milwaukee the opportunity to do just that. As it stands, the Brewers have the second-best record in the NL and are closer to the Cubs (2½ back) than they are to the Dodgers and Cardinals (three behind). Since the Brewers started what Yahoo Sports called the easiest schedule in the NL, they’ve gone 16-7, and what they’ve got left has them beaming.

At home against Cincinnati. On the road to Pittsburgh and St. Louis. Back home against Detroit. It’s not exactly a gauntlet for the Brewers, and it’s nothing like what awaits the Cardinals, who face the NL’s three best teams over the last two weeks. First it’s a trip to Atlanta this week. Then it’s a final week at home against the Brewers and the Cubs away. Throw in the series at the end of this week against San Francisco, and Cardinals’ opponents’ winning percentage: .544.

They’re going to have to earn it, and if they can use the …

9. Cardinals at Cubs season-ender to clinch one of those wild-card spots and celebrate in Chicago, all of the annoyance of celebrating in the shoebox that is known as Wrigley Field’s visitors’ clubhouse will be totally worth it. Or as totally worth it as it can be when a bunch of oversized guys are crammed in a space that could double as a capsule hotel with a smell that can best be described as eau de toilet.

The Cubs, meanwhile, get to spend their last week luxuriating in Wrigley’s home clubhouse – and the season’s final 11 days doing the same in their own homes. On Thursday, the Cubs will get their first off-day since Aug. 20, a span during which they’ll have played 31 games in 30 days. Then on Friday they start a three-game series against the Chicago White Sox before hosting Pittsburgh for four and St. Louis for three.

Chicago wants to finish strong not just for home-field advantage purposes but to ensure the Brewers don’t parlay that easy schedule into a threat to take the division. The last thing any team wants is to have to play in a win-or-go-home wild-card game. Especially teams that haven’t had much reason to consider it. Ever since Boston ran away with the AL East, the Yankees understood the wild card was their ticket to the postseason and the possibility of a …

10. Yankees at Red Sox matchup to kick off the division series. Already the teams are hooking up in the last regular-season series of the year, one that may determine how historically good Boston is.

Only six teams have won 110 or more games in a season: The 1906 Cubs (116), 2001 Mariners (116), 1998 Yankees (114), 1954 Indians (111), 1909 Pirates (110) and 1927 Yankees (110). The Red Sox can do so by going 7-5 the rest of the way. Half of those games will come against this incarnation of the Yankees, and there may be more after that.

The last time the two met in the playoffs: the infamous 2004 series in which the Yankees became the only baseball team ever to blow a 3-0 series lead and Boston wound up winning its first championship in 86 years and spawning the bitterness that today defines the rivalry among those not fully invested in either team.

The AL playoff road is like a marathon-length Tough Mudder. It’s going to be dirty and ugly and painful, and if the Yankees are the winner of the wild-card game and do set up a five-game series that starts at Fenway Park, not even the most ardent Yankees-and-Red Sox basher can disagree that two behemoths wailing on one another is good entertainment.

That right there is the truest case in favor of the Yankees and Red Sox. Forget all the ancillary nonsense, the vacuous hype, the mystique and aura, the blah blah blah. Starting Tuesday, and starting again next Friday, and perhaps starting Oct. 5 in prime time, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox will play. And so long as they’re interesting, compelling baseball teams that play interesting, compelling baseball, it’s time to sheathe the complaints and enjoy watching those behemoths wail.

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