What Red Sox can learn from D-backs about beating the Yankees; Rotation’s hot start — real or fool’s gold?

As it turned out, I made it to a Yankees game before I did a Red Sox game this season — in Arizona.

In the Phoenix area to cover the Final Four, I brought my wife to Chase Field (nice ballpark, by the way) on Tuesday to catch a game between the defending National League champion Diamondbacks and that other team.

I saw two teams in different positions than the one the Red Sox are in. The Diamondbacks are still in contender mode, hoping to run it back as the NL’s best team and climb one step further. And the Yankees are in win-now mode, too, after the offseason additions of Juan Soto, old friend Alex Verdugo and pitcher Marcus Stroman.

While the Sox won’t see much of the D-backs this year — save for a three-game series at Fenway in late August — they’ll certainly see plenty of the rival Yankees throughout the course of a 13-game season series.

New York has looked the part of a contender in the early stages of the season, but on this one particular night, the Diamondbacks dominated them in a 7-0 rout. It marked the Yankees’ first loss of the new year after opening 5-0. 

The formula for victory was fairly straightforward: the top half of the lineup and their power-hitting first baseman came through, an All-Star starter threw six shutout innings of three-hit ball with six strikeouts, and the bullpen combined for three hitless frames.

The Bronx Bombers were thoroughly stymied after scoring five or more runs in four of their first five games.

Zac Gallen’s arm and Christian Walker’s bat did the heavy lifting in this one, but the complete team effort from the reigning NL champs provided a blueprint for beating the Yankees — one that would behoove the Red Sox to follow.

The good news is that some of those qualities have been strong suits for Boston in the early going. The rotation has been nearly flawless through a turn and a half — entering the off day Thursday, they ranked third in the majors in starter ERA (1.89) and the team’s 1.54 overall ERA ranked first and their 0.85 WHIP second in all of baseball — and the bullpen has been the best in baseball (1.03 ERA). We definitely all saw that one coming, right?

The top of the batting order — which in Arizona’s shutout win over New York combined for seven of the team’s 12 hits and five of their seven runs — has been productive, at least the very top. Boston’s .414 batting average among their leadoff hitters leads the American League and ranks second in the majors. (After that, it’s a pretty steep drop off to ranking 20th in average for their two-hole hitters, 23rd for three-hole hitters, 13th for the four-hole and 15th for the five-hole…) 

It may sound a little cliche, but cliches are often based on truth. If your starters are consistently solid and go deep, if you have a strong top of the order, and if your bullpen can shut the door with regularity, then you’re generally onto something.

Boston won’t have to worry about beating New York until the middle of June, but if that one result is any indicator — and it remains the Yankees’ lone loss of the season thus far — then it looks like the Red Sox could be better positioned to beat up on their rivals than we expected…

Fool’s gold? 

For a team with such grave predictions (*sheepishly raises hand*) surrounding their starting pitching… the Boston Red Sox sure seem to have some pretty good starting pitching, don’t they?

As the numbers above attest to, Boston’s rotation has been the surprise of the young season. The very young season, mind you…

Aside from a four-run, two-homer hiccup by Brayan Bello in Tuesday’s extra-innings win at Oakland, the starters have gone above and beyond on a nightly basis.

But again… we’re not even talking about two full turns of the rotation. So what should fans make of the rotation’s early successes? A sign of the new norm in the Andrew Bailey era? Craig Breslow being the smartest guy in the room and knowing something we didn’t about this collection of arms? Or is this a mirage inflated by two series against a couple of non-playoff teams? 

I believe the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Bello, Nick Pivetta, Kutter Crawford, Garrett Whitlock and Tanner Houck might all be a stronger unit than we expected, but there are too many variables at play to know for certain.

Starters are implementing new mechanics and pitch types earlier in the season and are still trying to settle into what works for them. Of course, hitters and coaches pick up on these things as the season progresses, so that advantage will dissipate.

Then there’s the whole “facing the Oakland A’s” — a.k.a. the worst team in the league, possibly sports — in three of your first seven games element. No matter how low expectations for the Sox were after a dull offseason, you knew they were going to be significantly better than the A’s.

The Mariners series is more indicative of what I and many believe this team will be. A team that’s going to hover around .500, win some games they shouldn’t and lose some they shouldn’t, too. 

We probably won’t learn much more over the course of the next series either, as the Sox are set to take on the Shohei Ohtani-less Los Angeles Angels. Sure, the Angels are off to a 4-2 start and are first in the AL West… but that kind of proves my point, doesn’t it? 

Things should get interesting when the Sox open their home schedule against the reigning AL East champion Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday. How the arms perform against the O’s will be much more indicative of the trajectory they’ll take this season than the first seven games were. 

At the very least, the Red Sox should get some credit for winning (the A’s) and splitting (the Mariners) the series they’re supposed to, and over the course of a 162-game season, that goes a long way toward putting them in position to make a push for the playoffs…