Red Sox, Yankees might have to settle this in postseason

BOSTON -- Eight straight Red Sox wins over the Yankees, then five straight Yankee wins over the Red Sox.

A 20-11 Yankee win, followed immediately by a 14-1 Red Sox win.

Big Papi, Kevin Youkilis and Victor Martinez make an imposing middle of the order. (AP)

We're getting the Red Sox at their best and the Yankees at their worst. Or we're getting the Yankees at their best and the Red Sox at their worst.

There hasn't yet been one point this year where Yankees-Red Sox felt like an even matchup. But maybe there's still time for that.

Maybe that's what October is for.

Maybe that's where this is heading.

It feels more that way now than it has in a long time, mostly because the Red Sox feel more like a team that belongs back in a best-team-in-baseball argument than they have for a while.

"I think our identity is starting to solidify itself," Jason Varitek said Saturday, in the wake of that 14-1 win.

The addition of Victor Martinez and the rebirth of David Ortiz as a power threat have made the middle of the order scary again. The addition of Alex Gonzalez has kept ground balls to shortstop from being scary.

With Clay Buchholz looking better, Tim Wakefield coming back and even young Junichi Tazawa stepping up on Saturday, the back end of the rotation no longer scares you as much, either.

It's no doubt too late for the Red Sox to challenge the Yankees for the American League East title (the Yanks lead by 6 1/2 games, and never in their history have they blown a lead that big). But as you watch CC Sabathia vs. Josh Beckett on Sunday night, think about how that might look as Game 1 of an American League Championship Series.

The Red Sox still have work to do to get to October, but the presence of Beckett and Jon Lester would make them a truly dangerous team once there.

"If you have two dominant starters, that makes for a difficult series," said Mark Teixeira, whose Angels team faced Lester twice and Beckett once (and lost to the Red Sox) last October.

Teixeira is the middle-of-the-order hitter the Red Sox wanted so badly last winter, and a few weeks back it seemed their failure to sign him had left them badly lacking.

When the Red Sox and Yankees met two weeks back, the Sox went 31 innings without scoring a run, 26 innings without even advancing a runner to third base.

"We hit a point where 1 through 9 nobody was getting hits," Varitek said. "I don't think that was the true face of this team."

That point included one hit in 7 2/3 innings against A.J. Burnett, the same pitcher the Sox pounded Saturday for nine runs (most by a Yankees starter against the Red Sox since Ed Whitson).

Burnett typifies this Yankees-Red Sox season series, because he can look so good but also so bad. Good enough at times that you're just waiting for his next no-hitter, bad enough that he's on the way to being the first Yankee since Joe Bush in 1924 to lead the league in walks and wild pitches in the same year.

Matched up Saturday against Tazawa, the 22-year-old kid last seen on this stage serving up Alex Rodriguez's 15th-inning game-winning home run, Burnett gave up three runs in the first and then four more in the second. Tazawa admitted that the big early lead relaxed him, although it's starting to look like this is one relaxed and poised kid.

"It looks like if you're going to beat him, you're going to have to beat him," Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. "You're not going to beat him because he was in the industrial league last year."

Tazawa was in the industrial league, pitching for Nippon Oil, before the Red Sox signed him in what is still seen as a controversial move in Japan. It's actually not that unusual for a top Japanese prospect to come out of that league -- Hideo Nomo once pitched there -- but it is unusual for a Japanese kid to buck the system and sign immediately with an American team, rather than stopping in the Japanese professional league first.

That confidence showed Saturday, and Tazawa needed it because he put runners on base in each of his six innings.

He still found a way to get through it, something Burnett couldn't do. And remember, while Tazawa wouldn't figure to be in a Red Sox playoff rotation, the Yankees would want to slot Burnett in directly behind Sabathia.

Of course, if the Yankees and Red Sox do meet in the ALCS, and if Sabathia and Burnett do pitch the first two games, Burnett would start twice in Yankee Stadium and not at all at Fenway, where this year he's winless in three horrific starts this year, with a 14.21 ERA.

In his first Fenway start as a Yankee, Burnett couldn't hold a six-run lead. In his second start, he couldn't make it out of the third inning. Saturday, he gave up the most runs since Whitson.

And, in that one start at Yankee Stadium, he gave off a leadoff single in the first inning, and no other hits at all.

He's great, or he's awful. He's the best, or he's the worst.

He's Yankees-Red Sox 2009, at least so far.

Which one is he really? Which one are they really?

Ask again in two months.