Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today’s games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Today's edition is brought to you by David Adler.
Baseball's No. 1 rivalry is back tonight.
The Yankees and Red Sox face off in a three-game series at Fenway Park, their first meeting since the 2025 American League Wild Card Series.
The Yanks got the best of Boston in that playoff matchup, taking down the Sox in a winner-take-all Game 3 at Yankee Stadium. The Bronx Bombers are also off to the better start this season -- the Yankees enter this week's showdown in first place in the AL East at 13-9, while the Red Sox are tied for last with the Blue Jays at 9-13.
Tonight's series opener in Boston starts at 6:45 p.m. ET (TBS/MLB.TV), and you can find all the info on the rest of the series here.
But these are three big things we'll be watching for:
1) Will New York's 1-2 punch keep it going?
The Yankees have the top slugging duo in the Majors right now. One half of that duo is obviously Aaron Judge, whose nine home runs are one behind Yordan Alvarez for the MLB lead. The other half is Ben Rice, who's building on his breakout 2025 with eight homers already in '26 and an MLB-best 1.276 OPS. Judge and Rice have the most home runs of any pair of MLB teammates.
Rice has four home runs in 18 career regular-season games against the Red Sox (plus one in last year's playoffs), while Judge has 34 home runs in 117 games against Boston (plus a pair in the 2018 postseason), easily the most of any active player against the Red Sox.
2) Can Roman Anthony get hot?
Anthony looked like a budding star as a rookie last season and in the World Baseball Classic this year for Team USA. But he hasn't been at his best yet in 2026 -- the 21-year-old is off to a .234 start at the plate with just one home run through his first 21 games. This would be a big series for Anthony to get going.
3) How will Cam Schlittler do in his first start at Fenway?
Speaking of young guns: Schlittler, who starts Thursday's series finale for New York, has looked dominant to start the season (1.95 ERA, 36 strikeouts in five starts). And there's going to be a lot of hoopla surrounding the 25-year-old flamethrower's first career start at Fenway. Schlittler grew up a Red Sox fan in Massachusetts, and he's embraced the Yanks-Sox rivalry -- including stepping up in Game 3 of the Wild Card Series last October and eliminating the Red Sox with an eight-inning, 12-strikeout scoreless gem.
