Red Sox Have Shrunk Back to Yankees' Little Brother After Embarrassing AL Wild Card Blowout

In the end, the second straight showdown between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees in the Wild Card Series wasn't much of a show. It was more like watching a man trying to catch a falling redwood with his bare hands.

The Yankees were the redwood. The Red Sox were the man. The redwood won.

The shape of the Red Sox's splatter is that of a 2-0 sweep and an 18-2 run differential. No moral victory can be found in the wreckage. The Red Sox threw everything they had at the Yankees and they just kept coming, out-hitting, out-pitching and out-fielding their long-standing rivals with relative ease.

Those of us who have been around for long enough recognize this for what it is. This is what the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry used to feel like. The battles always felt big, but always had the same outcome: Yankees win and Red Sox lose, often in an embarrassing fashion. It was The Dark Times for Boston.

Well, that's now four straight losses with a total of five runs in playoff games against the Yankees. The Dark Times, it seems, have returned for the Red Sox.

The Red Sox Must Be Called Out for Having Done This To Themselves

One sympathizes with younger people who are very confused by all this.

Between 2002 and 2018, these were the two winningest teams in baseball. The Red Sox earned bragging rights because they tended to come out ahead in October. In those years, they won four World Series to the Yankees' one. The Red Sox also won nine of 10 head-to-head playoff matchups between Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS and Game 1 of the 2025 Wild Card Series.

Yeah, all that happened. That's why it's so jarring that this fair fight has so quickly turned into a rigged Mortal Kombat match. Or at least, it would be if there wasn't such an obvious culprit for the Red Sox's descent into mediocrity.

Nominally, John Henry still leads the same ownership group that has controlled the Red Sox since 2002. Realistically, they're one part of a multinational portfolio consisting of other sports franchises and enterprises. Private equity is also involved, because what else would you expect to hear in 2026?

The bottom line is hard to miss. In the 2000s and 2010s, the Red Sox routinely had a top-five payroll, even peaking at No. 1 in 2018 and 2019. Not anymore. They haven't had a top-five payroll even once in the 2020s and have indeed opened outside the top 10 in each of the last four years, including No. 12 this season.

Whatever this is, it's not maximum effort. Now more than ever, you can feel it.

The Red Sox Can Fix This…If They Want To

Granted, the Yankees don't spend or try as hard as they used to either. Yet they still throw their weight around more than the Red Sox, at least in that they still do the annual top-five payroll thing.

It matters. Since 2018, the Red Sox haven't finished ahead of the Yankees or won the AL East even once. For all their issues, the Yankees will take the bragging rights of having won the AL East three times in this span.

If you're a Red Sox fan looking for hope, it might be hard to see past how even the playoff teams of the last two years won just 89 and 87 games, respectively. The high-floor, low-ceiling vibes are strong, and compounded by the sheer flukiness of this year's playoff run. The Red Sox went 32-5 between June 25 and August 7. Everything on either side of that was forgettable or worse.

And yet, there are also this year's team WAR rankings:

1. Los Angeles Dodgers: 52.6
2. Milwaukee Brewers: 50.3
3. Boston Red Sox: 48.0
4. New York Yankees: 46.9
5. Chicago Cubs: 44.3

Hey, look. The Red Sox were actually elite. And that was even without much from Garrett Crochet and Roman Anthony, who were meant to be the pillars of Boston's pitching and hitting this year. Injuries felled both of them.

They'll be back in 2027, and ditto for Willson Contreras, Wilyer Abreu, Ceddanne Rafaela, Payton Tolle, Ranger Suárez and pretty much every big name save for Sonny Gray, who could become a free agent if he doesn't retire. When you have a core like this, and you know that Franklin Arias, MLB's No. 2 prospect, is also coming, there's only one thing to do:

Run with it.

Henry must stop pinching pennies and tell Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow to go get the missing piece. As Boston finished fifth from the bottom of MLB in home runs, they need a slugger. The more dynamic, the better.

Randy Arozarena will be a free agent this winter. Better options could be available on the trade market, perhaps including Elly De La Cruz and Yordan Alvarez at the high end. Heck, Bobby Witt Jr.'s name even came up at one point this summer.

Given how the Red Sox have operated for most of the last decade, this feels like an allusion to the impossible. It's ultimately on Henry to push the envelope, and his pushing muscles haven't had a workout in a while.

If anything can spur him, it should be the return of The Dark Times. Because if he got the Red Sox out of those times just to lead them right back in, what was the point?

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.