You aren't going to find a louder ballpark than what was on the display in Yankee Stadium Oct. 9, 2018.
Yet with the Yankees' fans bearing down on him in the seventh inning of Game 4 of the American League Division Series, Ryan Brasier cruised through all three New York batters he faced -- Luke Voit, Neil Walker and Gary Sanchez -- setting up the Sox' eventual nail-biting series-clincher.
Flash forward to Friday night.
With the Red Sox entering the home half of the fifth inning and the visitors trailing by just a run, Brasier took the mound. This time there wasn't a peep coming from the stands. Just the reliever against the Yankees' lineup, which in this spot included Aaron Hicks, Gio Urshela and Gleyber Torres. The righty got the first two, no problem. Then Torres singled. Suddenly, out of nowhere the here and the now emerged, making that playoff win seem a lot more than 676 days ago.
It wasn't the be-all, end-all. But it was a microcosm how things have changed since Eduardo Nunez's throw to an outstretched Steve Pearce narrowly got Torres to finally silence that crowd two seasons ago.
In the last two years, the Yankees have absolutely dominated the Red Sox, winning 18 of the teams' 23 meetings. After Friday night's performance, in which three other Red Sox pitchers (Colten Brewer, Dylan Covey, Brandon Workman) also surrendered two or more runs, the Sox' ERA against New York the last two years stands at 6.78.
It's only worse at Yankee Stadium, where the Red Sox have won just once since the 2018 ALDS, allowing the Yanks a plus-42 in run differential in the 13 games.
As was the case with Gerrit Cole this time around, Yankees pitchers have generally dominated Red Sox hitters during this stretch in the Bronx, holding them to a .212 batting average. It certainly doesn't help matters when the heart of your order, J.D. Martinez, starts 2020 going 1-for-11 with six strikeouts at Yankee Stadium.
In a nutshell, the Yankees have gotten a lot better in the last two seasons and the Red Sox have gotten a lot worse. One has the best record in the American League and the other has the worst. One has invested in pitching staff, the other has resorted to piecing together games literally inning by inning. One has turned the roster over with shrewd pickups (Urshela, Voit, D.J. LeMahieu), the other is trying to figure out life after Mookie Betts.
Let's face it, the Red Sox are having a hard time beating anybody these days. But what makes it worse is knowing the team you ultimately have to leap-frog seems in a completely different stratosphere.
"It’s obviously concerning,” said Roenicke. “You don’t like the mental mistakes. We can take getting beat, but we don’t want to give it to teams. Every time we do, they capitalize on it. We make an error and all of a sudden we give up a homer. Just doing things to give teams opportunities to score runs. So, just try to focus more, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the issue, the focus. I don’t know. Things are just not going well."