The Major League Baseball All-Star Game is a little less than two weeks away, but the New York Yankees are already being crowned by many as the eventual American League and World Series champion.
Although the Yankees have the best record in all of MLB, starting Tuesday night’s game against the Pittsburgh Pirates 58-22, based on recently losing three out of five games to the AL West leading Houston Astros, it is premature to already measure the Yankees for rings. There is still half of the 162-game regular season schedule to be played and too many unexpected circumstances ahead with so much time remaining.
The Yankees begin a four-game series tonight at Fenway Park versus their arch rival, the Boston Red Sox, and will play three more against them at Yankee Stadium July 15 through July 17. The Red Sox were just a .500 team at 27-27 on June 5, but since then have been formidable. They were 45-35 and second behind the Yankees in the AL East before the start of their matchup on Tuesday against the Tampa Bay Rays.
The Yankees, who opened this season at home taking two out of three against Boston, have been dominant after going 5-5 in their first 10 games. “There’s a lot of toughness and grit in this clubhouse,” said veteran switch hitting infielder Matt Carpenter, who the Yankees acquired in May after he was released by the Texas Rangers.
Carpenter hit two home runs and drove in four runs against the Cleveland Guardians in the first game of the teams doubleheader on Saturday, a 13-4 Yankees win. They also had a 6-1 victory in Game 2 as first baseman Anthony Rizzo and outfielder Giancarlo Stanton, who was serving as the designated hitter, hit back-to-back homers in the fourth inning to help lift starter Nestor Cortes Jr. to his seventh win. The lefty, who is 7-3 and scheduled to start tomorrow, went six innings against the Guardians allowing just three hits.