Erik Boland: Why the 18-10 Yankees look like the team to beat in AL
New York Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge, botttom, slides to avoid a collision as second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. (13) catches a fly ball during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Houston Astros, Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Houston. Credit: AP/Kevin M. Cox
HOUSTON – What a weekend for the Yankees.
Sure, their season-high eight-game winning streak ended with a thud in Sunday afternoon’s 7-4 loss to the Astros as Luis Gil further solidified his spot as a non-rotation member when Carlos Rodon returns from the injured list within the next three weeks.
And, indeed, after allowing six runs and five hits in four innings, Gil was optioned to Triple-A late Sunday afternoon.
But big picture, take a look at the American League landscape one month into the season.
Acknowledging that it is still super early in the year, none of the teams projected to be a contender, other than the Yankees, are off to a start of any consequence – in a positive sense, at any rate.
The Yankees have the best record in the AL at 18-10, with reinforcements such as Rodon and Gerrit Cole coming, as well as what appears a deep pool of talentin the minors with outfielders Jasson Dominguez and Spencer Jones and top pitching prospects Carlos Lagrange and Elmer Rodriguez high on that list.
The Yankees plan to call up Dominguez from the minors on Monday as DH Giancarlo Stanton will be put on the IL with a calf injury
The Rays, typically a pain despite their annual budgetary constraints, have the league’s next-best record at 16-11.
The AL East title is far from a lock for the Yankees, nor is the best record in the AL, for two reasons: First, unpredictable factors like injuries can quickly change the narrative over the next five months. Second, underperforming contenders — such as the Blue Jays, Mariners, Orioles, and Tigers — have the financial and prospect capital to make significant moves before the Aug. 3 trade deadline.
But the weekend saw, from the Yankees’ perspective, the elimination of one team expected to be a contender. One team you can stick a fork in for 2026, a team never too far from the collective mind of the Yankees organization. And, it’s not a stretch to say, likely in 2027, and perhaps beyond that, as well.
That would be the Red Sox, who took that proverbial fork and stuck it in themselves Saturday night by choosing in-over-his-head-since-he-was-hired general manager Craig Breslow, who has little on his resume in the way of success, over manager Alex Cora, who has, comparatively speaking, a bit more.
Club hierarchy, namely increasingly penurious owner John Henry, chose Breslow over Cora in a power struggle just about everyone in the industry saw coming pretty much from the time the former was named Chief Baseball Officer in October 2023.
Breslow has operated the franchise in a way that belies the 12 years he spent in the big leagues, treating experience of any kind, playing or coaching, with a borderline contempt, something that is a threat to the band of merry men from Driveline he’s stuffed into the organization at all levels.
Driveline, which in many ways has revolutionized hitting and pitching in the sport, has its place. Something Cora certainly would acknowledge. Ignoring the remarkable technological advances occurring in the sport on an almost yearly basis and not using all information available when it comes to numbers is nothing short of organizational negligence.
But Cora, who played 14 years in the majors – including 2006 when he overlapped with Breslow on the Red Sox – doesn’t view analytics/metrics as the final word on every baseball decision, such as roster construction.
The best Red Sox teams historically, for instance, have gone in heavy on the power to best take advantage of playing 81 home games at Fenway Park.
Breslow instead went heavy on the “run prevention” route – that phrase among the most uttered among the all-analytics-all-the-time crowd, as well as “our process.”
(Mets fans, of course, have already grown – or is it groan? – all too familiar with both phrases).
Rival scouts and talent evaluators, the same kind Breslow began jettisoning from the Red Sox organization pretty much from Day 1 on the job, saw run-scoring as being a major problem throughout spring training for the Red Sox. The regular season, unsurprisingly, has played out the same way.
“I’m happy,” Cora texted back multiple Red Sox beat reporters late Saturday night when reached for comment.
Given the dysfunctional mess the organization has devolved into under Breslow – google “Red Sox player reaction” to gain a full appreciation of that, which still doesn’t tell the entire story of that mess – Cora, no doubt, was being truthful.
When it comes to being threatened by their primary rival, at least for this season, the Yankees unquestionably feel the same.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
