Boston Red Sox at New York Yankees

Sitting in the visitors’ dugout Friday a couple of hours before his Red Sox took the field at Yankee Stadium for the first time this season, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow was asked how tough it is to proceed heading into the Aug. 3 Trade Deadline with so many American League teams (including Boston) off to subpar starts. “I think we need to run our own race,” said Breslow. “We need to make sure that we get our house in order. We need to play better. We need to win more games, and at that point we can figure out where we are relative to the league. “But I think the first thing is to continue to build on the progress that we've seen offensively over the last month and then make sure that we're pitching consistently well. And we need to win games for any of this to matter.” Win they did. Under the bright lights in the Bronx, Breslow’s Sox rode a towering two-run homer by Willson Contreras and a solid-enough pitching performance by Sonny Gray to edge out the Yankees, 5-3. While many things haven’t worked out so well for the Red Sox (27-35) to start 2026, the two trades Breslow made with the Cardinals in the offseason (one for Contreras, the other for Gray) have been clear positives. The homer by Contreras in the top of the fifth was his team-leading 13th of the season. Though it was down the line, the right-handed hitter enjoyed a brief pose while admiring his first career homer at Yankee Stadium land in the second deck in left. The baseball scorched off his bat at an exit velocity of 112.8 mph per Statcast, traveling a projected distance of 419 feet.