That offseason, the Red Sox famously brought in future Hall of Fame pitcher and future Hall of Fame-level asshole Curt Schilling to, as it turned out, co-front the rotation. They also brought in Mark Bellhorn, Terry Francona, and maybe even more importantly, Keith Foulke. It was a murderer’s row of talent, from the front office on down. As it turned out, it was just barely enough to get past the Yankees in a second consecutive ALCS Game Seven. That was elation so high it lifted my ankles off the floor.

That two-year period where the Red Sox went from so close to winning to losing to so close to losing to winning represents certainly the most intense rivalry between two teams I’ve ever experienced or endured in my lifetime. And now, dear reader, 200 words into this, here is my point. The rivalry is back, my dudes! . It’s back! The Red Sox and the Yankees are the two best teams in the division, two of the three best in the AL and probably two of the best five or six in baseball. This season, this 2018, is going to be another huge brawl of a season. They got Severino, we got Sale. They got Judge, we got Betts. They got Stanton, we got JD. So I thought it might be instructive to look and see how these two teams stack up against each other, a tale-of-the-tape, if you will, or even if you won’t.

Let’s start here. PECOTA. The PECOTA projections are here and they are spectacular. Though maybe not if you’re the Red Sox. I’ve already detailed how the Sox individual projections maybe aren’t as positive as we’d wish they were, but in the end and as we all know, games are won on the field not inside spreadsheets. Which is good, because PECOTA has the Yankees finishing seven games up on the Sox after winning 96 games. By any measure, 89 wins for the Red Sox would be an unsuccessful season, but that’s where things stand as of now. FanGraphs does their own full season projections as well, and theirs are slightly more favorable to Boston (which makes them worth mentioning). They have the Sox at 93 wins, a game behind New York’s 94. Better, but not what we’re looking for.

So let’s go deeper. Let’s go position-by-position and see who has the advantage. I’ll give you the names and their projected WARP in parentheses.

Catcher

Gary Sanchez (4.4) vs. Christian Vazquez (1.7)

This is one of the Yankees’ biggest advantages. Sanchez is, bizarrely as it is to say, perhaps as good a hitter as Judge. Vazquez is a fantastic defensive catcher, but at this point in his career, that’s mostly all he is.

Picks

PECOTA: Yankees

Matt: Yankees

First Base

Greg Bird (1.5) vs. Moreland/Ramirez (combined 0.4)

We don’t really know what Greg Bird is as a player yet, but he was as highly touted as Judge was prior to the 2017 season, so there’s some nightmare fuel for Red Sox fans. He missed most of last season with an injury and didn’t hit well upon return, but he’s young and talented so much more is expected of him this season. Moreland is Moreland, and it’s still unclear to me why the Red Sox felt it necessary with a glut of talent available on the market, to give him a two year contract. Best case he and Hanley combine to form the two sides of a successful platoon, so that could happen. Or Hanley could remember that he’s actually a great hitter.

Picks

PECOTA: Yankees

Matt: Push

Second Base

Gleyber Torres (0.1) vs. Dustin Pedroia (1.3)

Torres is yet another great Yankee prospect, but for now we don’t know what he is at the major league level. Pedroia is an aging middle infielder coming off of surgery. So who knows on either of these guys.

Picks

PECOTA: Red Sox

Matt: Red Sox

Shortstop

Didi Gregorius (1.7) vs. Xander Bogaerts (1.4)

Ever since he’s put on the pinstripes, Gregorius has continued to get better. Over a similar timeframe Bogaerts’ numbers are going in the opposite direction. I’m still a Xander Believer though, more so than Gregorius who hacks at everything and seems like exactly the kind of hitter the juiced ball turns into something he isn’t.

Picks

PECOTA: Yankees

Matt: Red Sox

Third Base

Brandon Drury (0.4) vs. Rafael Devers (1.8)

Drury is Gregorius with a more boring name. He’s got some pop but he doesn’t take walks and he’s not much beyond average defensively. That’s a fine profile for a team with Sanchez, Judge, and Stanton, but it doesn’t move the needle much either way. Devers might be the second best hitter on the Red Sox. He’s that good.

Picks

PECOTA: Red Sox

Matt: Red Sox

Outfield

Left Field: Giancarlo Stanton (3.9) vs. Andrew Benintendi (2.1)

Center Field: Aaron Hicks (1.2) vs. Jackie Bradley (1.0)

Right Field: Aaron Judge (4.0) vs. Mookie Betts (5.2)

We’re doing outfield together because this is getting long. The funny thing to me is that the Red Sox are a team built on the strength of their outfielders. Their best hitter and maybe their second best hitter are both outfielders. Their best fielders are outfielders. This is an outfield-heavy team. And yet, up against the Yankees, the strength of this Boston team falls back. The Yankees won’t be able to keep up with Boston defensively but they won’t be bad there, and what ground they lose there will more than be made up for with their bats. Good lord, those bats. The “ifs” here are health. The Red Sox players haven’t shown any predilection for missing games to injury, but Stanton and Hicks both have missed significant time over their careers.

Picks

PECOTA: Yankees

Matt: Yankees

Designated Hitter

Brett Gardner (1.8) vs. JD Martinez (2.9)

I don’t actually know who is going to DH for New York, so I picked the best Yankee projection not included in the above sections and put him here. That’s Gardner. But no leftover Yankee is going to hold a candle to J.D. Martinez in the hitting department.

Picks

PECOTA: Red Sox

Matt: Red Sox

I was going to do the pitching staffs as well, but this has already gone on too long. We’ll leave that for next time. For now, the results. Counting the outfield as three separate positions, PECOTA has Yankees 6, Red Sox 3. I have Red Sox 4, Yankees 4 with 1 push.

Any way you slice this, and I’m sure Yankee fans would disagree with my analysis, it’s close. That we know. PECOTA shows that. FanGraphs shows that. Our eyes show that. It’s going to be another fun season. Buckle the heck up.

Cameron picked Judge and Sanchez and he’s pretty clearly right. He’s right for a few reasons, but primarily because this question is a loaded one because the next five years include far more prime seasons from the Yankee duo than the Red Sox one. Judge is 25 now so his next five years include pretty much the exact seasons you’d want to have from a given player’s career. Sanchez is a year younger than Judge so he’s in almost exactly the same boat. Benintendi is 22 this season so his next five seasons barely reach his peak year of 27. Devers is 20 now so his next five don’t even get that far. All things being equal you take the guys in there prime years over the guys in their pre-prime years.

So you can see this question isn’t exactly fair. A better question might ask which set will be the most valuable over the course of their career or between the ages of 25 and 35. But that wasn’t the question asked and it wasn’t the one I ran by my editor. So let’s stick to the script and see what we can do with what we have.

To start with, this season Judge and Sanchez have combined for 12.3 WAR (FanGraphs version). That’s a baseball-leading 7.8 by Judge and the remainder, 4.5, from Sanchez. That’s FanGraphs WAR since this was a FanGraphs chat question. But for the record, by our WARP, Judge and Sanchez have totaled 12.5, so same difference. In comparison, Benintendi and Devers have totaled 3.1 by FanGraphs and 4.0 using our metrics. Devers has only been up for 50 games so he’s on pace for about a three win season, give or take. Still, you’re talking about the two Red Sox players totaling about half the value of the Yankees players. Also, we’re comparing a left fielder and a third baseman to a right fielder and a catcher. It’s much more difficult to find a good hitting catcher than a good hitting left fielder or third baseman, and the positional adjustment of WAR reflects that.

Given that Devers has been on a three-win pace as a 20 year old, you have to think he’s got some four or five win seasons coming in the near future. He may reach higher than that in his peak seasons.

Still though, the Red Sox have two very good young players on their hands. What would a good estimation of their value be over the next five seasons? Given that Devers has been on a three-win pace as a 20 year old, you have to think he’s got some four or five win seasons coming in the near future. He may reach higher than that in his peak seasons, but again, those aren’t covered under this question. Benintendi would have more value if he was in center field rather than left, so what the Red Sox do with Jackie Bradley over the next five seasons will have an impact here as well. Benintendi, like his pre-draft biography, is a high floor, lower ceiling player in that he’s not likely to fall off a cliff (he’ll get at least three wins a year reliably), but his lack of size likely limits his power output and thus ultimately his ceiling. Still, projecting four wins out of Benintendi annually seems fair. He could go higher, but let’s be conservative.

Putting all that together puts the two Sox over the next five seasons somewhere between 40 and 50 WAR. That, by the way, would be excellent production from two pre-prime players. As for the Yankees, Sanchez’s bat has fallen off this season in that he’s not hit at an Aaron Judge-ian pace all season long like he did for his abbreviated 2016 season. Aaron Judge, though, has. After all this, the big question seems to be how good is Aaron Judge? We have a pretty good idea that Sanchez should be worth four to five wins a year with maybe some fudging up or down depending on his health (he is a catcher after all) and peak seasons. Judge is a bit different. He’s a 25 year old with a .622 slugging percentage who slugged .345 in Triple-A last season. This is a guy who has made maybe the most dramatic of leaps one can imagine. That’s not to say he can’t continue to keep his production up. He’s clearly showed he has the ability to do it once so that’s a good indicator he can do it again. Will he though? Young players can struggle, as we’ve seen from Judge himself later this season before finding himself later in September. We’ve seen that from Mookie Betts as well and Xander Bogaerts before him. Eight wins a season is just really high and Judge basically put together an eight win season in about four months.

If Judge is an eight-win guy going forward, the two Red Sox are going to have trouble catching the two Yankees. Anyone would have trouble catching the two Yankees in that scenario as Judge and Sanchez would represent two of perhaps the most valuable players in baseball. Take the two best players on any team and you’ll have trouble topping Judge and Sanchez, and that includes Mike Trout and whomever else you take from the Angels.

So for the Red Sox to “win” this, Judge has to not be the MVP every damn season because that means one of Benintendi or Devers has to be a serious perennial MVP candidate. It’s possible, but that’s a tough thing to project unless a player has already shown the ability to play at that level. In other words, you’d be better off projecting Mookie Betts to win an MVP than Devers, not because Devers couldn’t win one, but because Mookie has played at that level.

So the answer, likely sadly, is that Judge and Sanchez are very likely to be more valuable. Now, alter that question a bit and the result could be different. For example, why did the questioner pick Benintendi and not Betts? Betts and Xander would be a more comparable group and you could maybe make a stronger argument for them. In fact, that would be pretty close. So in essence, this is the Yankees varsity group against the Red Sox JV. And likely the results are going to show that.

Now watch Devers win the MVP next season.

Photo by David Kohl – USA TODAY Sports