Latest Yankees-Red Sox Clash Could Force Boston to Become Sellers

Officially, there are a little over two months remaining in the 2012 Major League Baseball season. There's plenty of time for would-be contenders to make a run.

The Boston Red Sox can't afford to think like this. For them, crunch time was yesterday. Not to mention the day before that and the day before that. 

The term "crunch time" doesn't come close to cutting it as far as Boston's three-game series at the New York Yankees this weekend is concerned. They need to treat it as a playoff series, with each individual game being Game 7 of the World Series.

Their season hinges on this series.

Exaggeration? What exaggeration? That ain't no exaggeration. That's the truth.

For the moment, the Red Sox are acting like a team that has its heart set on making the postseason this year. Though there has been some buzz about them possibly trading fallen stars like Jon Lester, Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford, there is also plenty of buzz about them being buyers at the trade deadline. 

Goodness knows they have needs to fill. It's been widely reported that the Red Sox are looking for a high-end starting pitcher they can slot into their rotation, and the latest report from Joel Sherman of the New York Post claims this is still the case. According to him, the Red Sox are also looking for an upgrade at shortstop.

As far as possible trade targets go, Sherman says that the Red Sox tried to ship Crawford to the Miami Marlins for Jose Reyes in an attempt to jettison a bad contract and fix their shortstop situation simultaneously. That deal died pretty much immediately.

On the pitching front, Sean McAdam of CSNNE.com and others have reported that the Red Sox have their eye on another Miami player, right-handed starter Josh Johnson. He suits the Red Sox because he's an ace-level pitcher who's under contract through 2013.

As always, it's a good idea to take deadline rumors such as these with a grain of salt. Rumors don't always lead to deals. And this year, the price for controllable pitchers such as Johnson is enormous.

Even still, where there's smoke, there's fire. Sox general manager Ben Cherington is clearly weighing all his options, and the possibility exists that he'll swing a major deal to bolster Boston's chances of contending this season.

But let's face it. He's only going to do so if he thinks the team he has is worth it. The only way he's going to know that for sure is if the Red Sox open a few eyes at Yankee Stadium this week.

A series victory is a must. Winning two out of three will get the Red Sox back to the .500 mark, and it would prove to the rest of the league that the Red Sox are indeed capable of hanging with the best team in the American League (record-wise, anyway).

The Red Sox have yet to prove that they are capable of hanging with the Yankees, of course. They're 1-5 against the Bombers this season, with all six of those games having been played at Fenway Park.

If the Red Sox prefer to look at things from a glass-half-full perspective, they'll rationalize that the Yankees beat them when their starting pitching staff and bullpen were both disasters earlier in the season, and they beat them again when the Red Sox's injury problem was at its worst just before the All-Star break.

Though they're still without David Ortiz, the bright side for the Red Sox is that they're heading into this series healthier than they've been all season. They're as ready for the Yankees as they're ever going to be. All it will take for them to give the Yankees a few bruises is solid starting pitching and some timely hits.

...Both of which have been hard to come by for the Red Sox recently. The only Red Sox starter who's given the Red Sox quality innings recently is Clay Buchholz, who will not be seen this weekend. Offensively, Big Papi's absence seems to have sucked the life out of Boston's starting nine.

So for the Red Sox to actually take this series from the Yankees, they'll basically need to play like a team other than themselves. Their starting pitching needs to step up, their key hitters (see Crawford, Carl) need to step up and they can all do themselves a big favor by playing with just a little heart. 

A series victory is the least the Sox can do. What they really need, however, is a sweep.

A sweep doesn't seem at all likely. The Yankees are a stronger team than the Red Sox. They've made that abundantly clear in the six games these two teams have played this season. For the first time in a long time, the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry has gone back to being a David and Goliath affair.

Red Sox fans should hope for the best and prepare for the worst. If recent history is any indication, Boston is doomed to fall short this weekend.

If they do, there will be no point in them continuing to act like they're fighting the good fight. It will be time to wave a white flag and pull the plug on a season that seemed doomed from the very start.

If the Red Sox are humbled by the Yankees once again, it will be time to sell. And no player should be off-limits.

Lester and Beckett should be put on the block. Crawford should be made available to any team that sees him as a change of scenery candidate. The Red Sox should see what they can get for veterans like Cody Ross, Aaron Cook, Kelly Shoppach, Mike Aviles, Ryan Sweeney and Nick Punto. 

They should even dangle Jacoby Ellsbury, who is due to become a free agent after the 2013 season comes and goes.

The only untouchables should be Buchholz, Dustin Pedroia, Adrian Gonzalez, Will Middlebrooks and maybe Jarrod Saltalamacchia. This is a good core of players, one that the Red Sox can build a contender around in short order.

If the Red Sox pursue this route, they won't really be rebuilding, per se. What they'll be doing is trimming some fat that desperately needs to be trimmed, and doing so will conceivably allow them to put solid padding around a solid core. Call it "retooling" if you must.

The Red Sox could use a good retooling. Presently, the core they're built around is something of an older model. It was installed before the 2011 season at a time when both experts and fans viewed the Red Sox as serious World Series contenders.

That's not how the Red Sox are viewed anymore. At best, they are postseason contenders and nothing more. At worst, they're the American League's answer to the Philadelphia Phillies. 

The reality of the situation will become clear over the next three days. If the reality is that the Red Sox truly are a mediocre ballclub with little hope of doing anything of note in the future, Cherington and his staff need to move quickly to accept that reality and deal with it accordingly.

Win this weekend, and they can keep playing.

Lose this weekend, and it will be thanks for playing. Better luck next year.

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