Can Yanks turn around 1-8 mark vs. Bosox?

CHICAGO -- This weekend's Yankees-Red Sox series in Boston won't determine the American League East winner.

But plenty will be on the line and there will be plenty of storylines when the three-game series starts Friday night at Fenway Park -- primarily, can the Yankees beat this team?

The Yankees moved into a tie for first place with the Red Sox Thursday night, an impressive feat considering they're 1-8 against their rival this season.

"You look up and you're 1-8 against a team, you wouldn't think that you would be one game out of first place," Joe Girardi said before Thursday night's 7-2 win over the White Sox earned the Yankees a share of first place. "We know we have to play better against them. We have to pitch better, we have to hit better and we can't make mistakes."

The Yankees did none of those things, at least not the first two, in most of their previous meetings with Boston this season, games that weren't all that close. The Yankees were outscored 60-37 in the nine games.

The teams haven't played in a while, with the most recent series June 7-9 at the Stadium, a Red Sox sweep in which they outscored the Yankees 25-13.

"They've played better than us," Derek Jeter said. "If you're playing a good team like Boston and you don't play well, they're going to beat you. They've played well against us, we haven't played well. So is [1-8] surprising? It's not surprising because they did better than us. It's like a few years ago when we started off poorly [against them] and everybody said, what's the problem? And then it flipped."

That would be 2009, when the Yankees' 0-8 start against the Red Sox became one of the most forgotten statistics of the season. The Yankees finished the season series against Boston 9-9 and, of course, won the World Series.

Adding to the anticipation of this weekend's series is that both teams are playing well.

The Yankees have been playing some of their best baseball of the season, winning seven straight and 10 of 12. For all the hand-wringing about their shortcomings, they have gone 48-23 (.676) since falling to 20-19 on May 16. That's the most victories by any major-league team in that stretch.

Boston has been hot as well. Since dropping to 45-34 and falling 21/2 games behind the Yankees on June 29, they have gone 23-8.

Said Nick Swisher, "They're clicking on all cylinders and we feel we're clicking on all cylinders."

Both teams seemingly are locks to reach the postseason, but neither team is looking at the wild card as a fallback. Girardi has made it clear that the criticism he received in the final weeks last season -- primarily for resting certain players and not appearing to be going all-out to win the division crown -- still bothers him.

"It frustrated me last year because there was never a point where I said I didn't want to win our division," Girardi said. "You think I'm trying to lose the division? Come on. You want home-field advantage and we're going to fight for it . . . I think it's going to be a big weekend. It's important enough to make it a big weekend."