What does this weekend showdown mean for the Red Sox and Yankees?

The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees meet for a three-game weekend series heading into the All-Star break. While this series doesn't have the same intrigue as in the past, we wondered: What does the weekend mean for the two clubs?

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Edes: Series suddenly means something

Only 20 days ago, after the Boston Red Sox fell 10 games under .500 and a season-worst 10 games behind the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League East, it appeared a given that the next meaningful game at Fenway Park would come in November, when Boston College plays Notre Dame in the first football game at Fenway since 1968.

Even if the Sox started winning a few, the wise guys reasoned, they weren't going to overtake all four teams ahead of them in the division.

Well, lookee here. The Sox have won 11 of their past 16 games since then, and no one else in the division has a winning record in that span. The Rays have gone into free fall, losing 15 of their last 18. The Blue Jays are 7-11. The Orioles are 8-9 and have lost 8 of 10. The Yankees, too, are just 8-9, and while they come into town this weekend with a 5 ½-game lead over the Sox, they have their own problems, which appears to be the operative theme in this division.

The Orioles are a game over .500. The Blue Jays are even. The Rays are two under. The Sox, at four under, should have been buried long ago. In a normal season -- it's taken at least 95 wins to take the division every year since 2000 --they would have been. But now all bets are off.

The Sox come into the weekend having won four straight, their longest winning streak of the season. They have won consecutive series against the Rays, Blue Jays, Astros and Marlins, with the wins against Tampa Bay and Toronto coming on the road.

No one thought much of it at the time, but when the Sox banged out 13 extra-base hits against the Royals on June 21, the most by any team this season, that was the first indication since the season opener -- when they hit five home runs -- that Boston's offense might actually live up to its advance notices. The Sox are averaging 5.5 runs a game during their little run, with 54 extra-base hits and seven games in which they've reached double figures in hits.

And they're doing it without Dustin Pedroia, who is eligible to come off the disabled list on Friday but might be given another week to let his strained right hamstring heal, and Mike Napoli, who remains in a horrific slump so crippling (5 for his past 43, .116) that manager John Farrell has resorted to giving David Ortiz a couple of starts at first base.

Xander Bogaerts has posted a .357/.390/.482/.872 slash line in the 13 games in which he took over the No. 3 hole from Pedroia. David Ortiz has nine home runs since June 11, including his first this season off a lefty (Toronto's Matt Boyd). Alejandro De Aza improbably stabilized what had been an untenable situation in right field, his 13 RBIs during the team's run second only to the 14 apiece for Ortiz and Bogaerts.

Clay Buchholz has pitched like a No. 1 starter for the better part of two months now, and left-handers Eduardo Rodriguez and Wade Miley have brought a degree of dependability that was sorely lacking in the rotation. And after eight consecutive winless starts, Rick Porcello's victory Wednesday against the Marlins offered hope that he can turn things around in the second half. The return of catcher Ryan Hanigan, who missed two months with a fractured hand, should resonate with the entire staff.

So this series against the Yankees, which until recently promised little but an excuse to boo A-Rod, has a chance to revive some of the old passions on Yawkey Way. All of the team's flaws have hardly been washed away in 20 days, but what seemed such a far-fetched notion just three weeks ago has been turned on its head. A Sox sweep this weekend, and the same fans who were clamoring for general manager Ben Cherington to blow up this team will be begging him to work some trade-deadline magic. A Yankee sweep would be justification to reach for the detonator again. Anything in between won't alter the fact that the Sox didn't have to so much climb back into the race as meet their falling rivals halfway. Four games under .500 in July to potential postseason qualifier in October? It will take more than three good weeks to sell that notion, but a triumphant series this weekend would certainly help.

Matthews: Don't expect seismic shift at Fenway

The Yankees are spending their final weekend before the All-Star break at Fenway Park (where else?) with a chance if not to bury the Red Sox, then at least to kick a little dirt on their suddenly revived playoff hopes.

Let's dispense with all the silliness of The Most Vaunted Rivalry in Sports, a myth that pretty much died when Ryan Dempster retired, Jacoby Ellsbury became a Yankee and Alex Rodriguez became a warm and cuddly stuffed animal for baseball fans around the country.

That myth lives on these days only in the heads of sports editors and the lowest common denominator of baseball fans; to the players on the Yankees, at least, three days at Fenway is about as adrenaline-raising as three days in Houston, and probably less so than three days in Baltimore.

This Yankees-Red Sox series is about nothing more than one team trying to put some real distance between itself and the other, and the other with the chance to narrow, but not quite close, the gap.

The guess is neither will accomplish its preferred goal. From day-to-day observation of the Yankees, it is obvious that this is a maddeningly erratic team, capable of sweeping the Tigers in Detroit or the defending AL champion Royals at home and then being swept by the likes of the Philadelphia Phillies and losing three of four to the Oakland Athletics.

So no, these Yankees aren't likely to bury anyone between now and Oct. 4, not even the underperforming Red Sox. The odds are the AL East -- made competitive once again not by ability, but pervasive mediocrity -- will be a dogfight right down to the wire.

And the odds are even greater that this weekend will wind up being a 2-of-3 affair in favor of one team or the other -- I'm not dumb enough to try to guess which one -- resulting in a fairly inconsequential, one-game difference from where we started.

The Yankees will send Michael Pineda, Ivan Nova and Nathan Eovaldi out against Clay Buchholz, Eduardo Rodriguez and Wade Miley. Pineda was as close to a sure thing as any starter the Yankees could send out for the first two months of the season, but he hasn't been the same pitcher for his past five starts as he had been for his first 10. The jury is still out on Nova, making just his fourth start after coming back from Tommy John surgery, and as talented as Eovaldi is, sometimes it appears as if he will never be more than a five- or six-inning pitcher.

The good news is that with the return of Ellsbury and Andrew Miller, the Yankees are as close to whole again as they have been since the start of spring training.

But even when they were whole, this was a team that never seemed to perform to expectations for any extended period of time. Remember, the Yankees started the season at 3-6.

They have been a lot better since, but they're still prone to lapses in consistency and the ravages of age and injury.

They have a great opportunity to nip this Red Sox resurgence in the bud this weekend before going off to enjoy four days of much-needed rest.

But my guess is that the Yankees' three days at Fenway won't resolve any questions. The likelihood is they will only raise more.