Think of the Detroit Tigers as the appetizer. Now comes the main course.
The Red Sox did what they should have done -- and notably, didn't do against the Pirates last week at Fenway -- when they dispatched the Tigers Sunday, 4-1, giving them a three-game sweep.
The victory gave the Red Sox a winning record for just the second time this season. They sit at 5-4, which, in comparison to recent seasons, feels like a strong start out of the gate.
Starting Monday, however, the JV is gone and it's time to take on the varsity.
The Tampa Bay Rays not only sit comfortably in first place in the American League East, but they're the talk of baseball. With their 11-0 pasting of the Oakland A's Sunday at Tropicana Field improved Tampa Bay's record to 9-0.
Argue, if you'd like, that the Rays have been gifted a head start to their 2023 season by the schedule-makers, who arranged for the Rays to start the year with series against Detroit, Washington and Oakland -- arguably the three worst teams in the game. Or, at the very least, three teams in the conversation for the worst.
But the Rays have not just run the table so far, they've completely dominated the opposition. They've scored more runs on home runs than they've allowed, period. They're not winning; they're trampling teams. They won the final two games of their recent series with the A's by identical 11-0 scores. How superior have the Rays been to date? They're the first team in almost 140 years -- dating back to 1884 -- to amass a run differential of more than 50 over their first nine games.
That's how superior.
All of which means they should provide a good measuring stick for the Red Sox. If the Red Sox can go into Tropicana Field this week and split the four-game set, it will feel like an achievement -- not just because of how well the Rays have been playing, but also, considering how the Sox fared against A.L. East rivals a year ago.
For much of the season, you'll probably recall, the Red Sox were completely outclassed by the Yankees (6-13), Blue Jays (3-16) and Rays (7-12). The Orioles were the line team in the division against whom the Red Sox had a winning record (10-9) and even then, only barely.
In all, the Red Sox finished with an embarrassing 26-50 mark, meaning they lost almost exactly two of every three games against the teams they were competing against. When Major League Baseball unveiled a new schedule format for 2023, with teams playing 52 games in the division instead of the previous 76, it felt like a gift from the Baseball Gods. (Despite finishing last and with a losing record, the Red Sox actually had a winning record in 2022 against teams from outside the East).
But in another sense, the reduced number of intra-division games serves to attach additional importance to the ones that are played. When the Red Sox leave Florida Thursday night, they'l have just nine more games with the Rays the rest of the way. They won't meet again until the first weekend in June at Fenway, and the two remaining series don't take place until September.
Already, the Rays are threatening to do what the Red Sox did in 2018 when the Sox ran off and hid in the first three weeks of the season, leaving the rest of the division fighting for the scraps. That a team could already be nine games over .500 before the season is even two weeks old is, depending on your vantage point, either highly impressive or downright frightening. The Sox can't afford to cede too much more ground in the East before Patriots Day arrives on the calendar.
As always, the Rays are better than they seemingly should be. They use the entire roster, take advantage of platoon match-ups daily, and feature a parade of relievers -- many of them anonymous and on their second or third organization -- who feature elite stuff out of the bullpen. They play before modest crowds in a ballpark that literally and figuratively resembles a circus tent, and their future address is, as ever, muddled.
Naturally, this doesn't impact the team on the field. Pitted against teams with payrolls twice or three times bigger, the Rays remain the Little Team That Could.
Last season was hardly an aberration: the Rays have won the season series in each of the last four years and six of the last nine.
It's April 9, and the Red Sox are, despite a winning record, already four games behind. If they have actual designs on playing games that matte in the second half of this season, they would be wise to not let that gap get any bigger over the next 96 or so hours.