A year ago, the American League East was the toughest division in baseball, with both American League wild-card entrants coming from the AL East and the fourth-place team narrowly missing out, despite 91 wins.
A case could be made that the division actually improved during the offseason. The Blue Jays made a number of big acquisitions, while the Yankees overhauled the left side of their infield.
The best got better.
And if the Red Sox didn't already know that, they're finding out in a hurry.
The Sox dropped their second straight game Sunday, a 5-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays. Sunday's victory meant the Rays won the series, following quickly on the heels of the Blue Jays, who came into Fenway and took two-of-three there.
Add in the first series of the season, when the Sox dropped two of the first three games on the schedule to the Yankees, and the Red Sox are 0-3 in series against division rivals, with a record of 3-6.
Just 16 games into the season, the Sox are already four games behind the division-leading Blue Jays, whom they play over the next four days at Rogers Centre.
It's not time to panic. But now would be a good time to, at the very least, express some concern.
"You've got to give those guys credit,'' said starter Rich Hill of the Rays, whom he blanked for his four innings. "This is a tough division. It's going to be a tough division all year long and obviously, we have work to do. Going up to Toronto, it's not going to be easy series, either. But with that said, we are fully capable of going on a nice run here. We've got to get back into that 'one pitch at a time' mentality, one swing at a time and ultimately, build up those small successes into (wins).''
Some offense would help, too. In the three games against the Rays, the Red Sox managed all of eight runs in 28 innings. They went without a hit from the sixth inning of Game 1 through the 10th inning of Game 2. And while they quickly jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first inning after only five batters, they didn't score again and had just two hits after the first inning.
The offense was similarly missing in action in the recent series with Toronto at Fenway, when the red Sox were limited to three measly runs in the final two games, both losses.
In both series, the Sox took the first game of the set, then dropped the final two both times as the bats wilted. In the nine games against the Yankees, Jays and Rays so far this season, the Red Sox have scored more than four runs in a single game once -- when they pushed across five in an Opening Day walkoff loss to New York.
Much of their struggles are rooted in the lack of offense. Collectively, the lineup is hitting just .225, below even the depressed average across the game. The Sox aren't being selective at the plate -- they rank in the bottom five when it comes to walks, and no other team in the game has chased more pitches outside the strike zone.
Power? That switch hasn't been flipped. The Sox are in the bottom third in home runs, and their slugging percentage has them in the bottom half of the 30 teams.
Sure, they miss J.D. Martinez, who's missed the last four games with a strained adductor. But there are many more problems, including the inability to find a table setter. The Boston leadoff spot -- shared by Kike Hernandez and, more recently, Trevor Story -- is supplying an on-base percentage of .254. It's hard to get big innings going there are no table setters. The Sox are getting almost no offensive production from three positions on the field -- first base, center field and catcher.
As a team, the Red Sox are last in pitches per at-bat, further evidence that they're pressing some and showing little patience.
Following the upcoming four-game set in Toronto, the Red Sox will wrap up this trip with three in Baltimore. A year ago, the Sox were 13-6 against the lowly Orioles, who provide something of a respite amid the more demanding games in the division.
It's early, yes, and a four-game deficit is hardly insurmountable. By comparison, the Sox played the final seven weeks of last season with a minimum of a five-game deficit in the division and still managed to finish tied for second and went deep into the ALCS.
But it's not an advisable strategy to fall this far back, this early. The good news? After Thursday, the Red Sox won't see any of the three tough East rivals again until July.
Still, it would behoove them to hang closer until then. And the early returns have been, at the very least, somewhat troubling.