However, the circumstances of the past few days have added a degree of urgency to the immediate upcoming schedule, namely three games against that team in that city a few hours down I-95.
The "it's early" retorts will fail to hold water if things in New York this weekend look anything like things did in Toronto on Tuesday and Wednesday, when the Red Sox dropped two games to fall to 17-20 and drop six behind the Yankees in the loss column, a deficit large enough to take into consideration, even at this early stage. Simply dropping two of three makes it a seven-game gap in the loss column one-quarter of the way through the year.
The capper to the quick two-game series in the Rogers Centre was a 9-3 disaster that saw John Lackey throw up another ugly line. He gave up all nine runs in 6 2/3 innings, walking five and striking out just one, an effort that bumped his ERA to 8.01 and his frustration to new heights.
"Everything went wrong that could go wrong, pretty much the story of the whole damn year," Lackey said during a postgame session with reporters in which he exhibited almost a resigned tone.
Lackey actually did well to get his team to the seventh inning trailing by just one run, 4-3. And he had two outs in the inning before walking in one run and allowing a two-run double to John McDonald that essentially doomed the Sox.
The reason Lackey was left out there to throw a season-high 118 pitches, even when the Blue Jays threatened to blow the game wide open, was the lack of fresh arms in the bullpen. Matt Albers had thrown 4 2/3 innings in the last four games. Daniel Bard was used in three of those contests and gave up a home run in his one inning of work Tuesday night. Alfredo Aceves had to throw 4 2/3 innings of long relief on Friday and then appeared Monday and Tuesday out of the pen. Hideki Okajima threw a career-high 43 pitches Monday.
And so, there was Lackey, fighting tooth and nail to get that last out and keep his team in the game.
When it never came, and a tight affair was turned into a laugher, all Boston could do was look forward to a much-needed day off. It is the only one on the schedule in the course of 37 days for the Red Sox, making Friday's opener in Yankee Stadium the first of 20 games in 20 days.
That means Thursday is a time to get things lined up.
"We didn't get anybody up tonight, so that was good," manager Terry Francona said after the loss Wednesday. "Would've liked to have done it with a 10-3 lead, rather than losing like that. But now we can get everybody back in order to where we can use whoever we want, whenever we want, which is certainly helpful."
It is not much, but when you lose one game in extra innings, another in brutal fashion and you are about to jump into the most important series of the season, you have to try and find positives somewhere, whether it's early or not.
