Six years ago, I did a Yankees-Dodgers email exchange with my then-girlfriend Brittni Michaelis. The teams played a pair of two-games series in the Bronx and Los Angeles and we attended the entire four-game season series. The last time the two teams met in Los Angeles, the Yankees’ lineup included Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano and Alfonso Soriano as well as Vernon Wells, Brent Lillibridge, Jayson Nix and Chris Stewart.

A lot has changed since my first trip to Dodger Stadium in August 2013, including my then-girlfriend Brittni Michaelis becoming my now-wife and Brittni Keefe this June in New York City. But one thing hasn’t changed: neither team has won a championship.

For the third straight season, there’s a very real possibility the Yankees and Dodgers could meet in the World Series. The Yankees failed to hold up their end of the bargain the last two seasons, while the Dodgers ended up losing both World Series. This past weekend in Los Angeles, we got somewhat of a preview of what a World Series between the two teams would look like.

Brittni and I traveled back to her native Los Angeles for the first West Coast meeting between the teams since our last email exchange. Because of the momentous occasion and their possible postseason reunion, it only made sense to recap the Yankees’ series win in another email exchange.

Neil: Who knew all it would take for Aaron Judge to come out of his slump was a weekend against the team with the best record in baseball, and a couple of games against the National League All-Star Game starting pitcher and the best pitcher of his generation and possibly the best pitcher of all time? I would like to thank the Dodgers for turning Judge back into Judge for the final 30 games of the season leading into the postseason.

And who knew all it would take for James Paxton to realize his potential and find himself for the first time in more than four months would be a game against the NL’s top run-scoring offense and the best home team in the majors? I would also like to thank the Dodgers for potentially turning Paxton’s season around and giving the Yankees a comfort and confidence boost for their postseason rotation.

Despite winning two out of three (and what might have been a sweep if not for the most egregious umpiring decision of the season), the Yankees getting their 2-hitter back on track for the final the month of the season and getting a dominant performance from their potential Game 1, 2 or 3 postseason starter was just as important as trimming the Dodgers’ home-field advantage lead to one game. Thank you, Dodgers. After taking on all the Red Sox’ bad contracts seven years ago and then putting together an embarrassing performance against the Red Sox in the World Series last year, you have finally done something to help the Yankees.

It was a near-perfect weekend in Los Angeles. The only things that prevented it from being perfect were the Players Weekend uniforms and the ninth-inning umpiring on Saturday.

Brittni: I only wish the Dodgers could have played the Yankees when they didn’t have a 20-game division lead and didn’t have a significant lead for the best record in the National League. Maybe then Dave Roberts would have managed to win and the series could have had a different outcome. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough In-N-Out or Micheladas to cure my baseball hangover from the weekend.

Hyun-jin Ryu’s performance on Friday was the real Ryu that Dodgers fans have come to know. The second you expect greatness from him, he lets you down. Fatigue is being cited as the reason for his performance on Friday night, but what do you expect? It’s late August and he’s pitched more innings this season than he has in any season in five years.

As for Kershaw, I can’t say enough about him and won’t say anything bad about him. He is the Dodgers. He pitched well and more than good enough to win on Sunday (7 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 0 BB, 12 K, 3 HR), but he got beat by three solo home runs because his offense didn’t show up, which pretty much summarizes his entire career. Everyone expects a complete-game shutout from him when he starts because he’s set the bar so high over the last decade, and when he doesn’t, he gets unfairly criticized. Kershaw has had to be near-perfect to win for most of his Dodgers career and Sunday was another example of that.

Neil: I have been fearful of the Yankees and Dodgers meeting in the World Series this season and the Dodgers ending their 30-year championship drought and you getting the first Dodgers championship of your lifetime at my expense. Not only that, but after losing to the Astros and Red Sox in back-to-back World Series, it’s supposed to be the Yankees’ turn of the AL powerhouses to win a championship against the Dodgers, so it would be more than painful if they lose to the Dodgers. I have been fearful of that possible outcome because of the Dodgers’ dominant starting pitching, but after this weekend, I’m no longer fearful. Starting pitching is all the Dodgers have going for them and with the now right-handed heavy Yankees lineup, left-handed starting pitching no longer matches up well against them in the postseason.

When it comes to the Dodgers’ offense, I laugh at those who think it’s top-notch because of the numbers they see on paper and the stats they have padded against the crappy NL West where the second-best team is the .500 Giants. As someone who stays up late each night watching the Dodgers with you, and someone who has lost many, many times on inflated Dodgers money lines, I know the real Dodgers offense and it sucks.

As for the Dodgers’ bullpen, unless Kenley Jansen finds his cutter, who is getting important outs for them in October? Joe Kelly?! Pedro Baez?! Yimi Garcia?!

How could you or any Dodgers fan feel good about this roster?

Brittni: It was three games and the smallest of sample sizes. You aren’t scared of the best starting pitching in baseball? You’re taking crazy pills. You should be petrified. The Yankees’ bats will be silenced this October like they were last October and in Games 6 and 7 the previous October when they were one win away from playing the Dodgers in the World Series.

I’m not the biggest fan of this roster, but I don’t have a choice. The front office refused to make any moves at the deadline, so this is what I’m stuck with. I’m not sure this roster has what it takes to finally win the World Series, though if they get a couple of breaks in the postseason, like the one in the ninth inning on Saturday, they could.

The Dodgers are going to be able to coast through September, rest their everyday players and allow their pitchers to get their work in as needed. You might not be scared of the Dodgers’ starting pitching in a potential World Series matchup, but you should be scared of the Yankees’ starting pitching for the entire postseason. Even with Paxton and Domingo German shutting down the Dodgers and giving you comfort and confidence, do you really trust them? Or Masahiro Tanaka or CC Sabathia or J.A. Happ? If Luis Severino doesn’t come back and come back as his usual self, you better stock up on your lifetime “Ladies and gentleman” immunity passes for Twitter. You’re going to need them.

Neil: I don’t feel good about the rotation, but I don’t need them to pitch seven-plus innings in the postseason like you need Kershaw, Ryu and Walker Buehler to. I just need them to get through four innings and get 12 outs with either a lead or a close game. Then it’s 15 outs from Chad Green, Tommy Kahnle, Adam Ottavino, Zack Britton, Aroldis Chapman, and hopefully the best reliever in baseball: Dellin Betances.

Unfortunately, the Dodgers are probably going to have the best record in baseball this season and have home-field advantage for a potential World Series meeting. Aside from five games against the Rays and Mets, the Dodgers don’t have another game against a team with a winning record this season. Ladies and gentlemen, the NL West! So if the Yankees and Dodgers do meet again, it will be on Tuesday, Oct. 22 in Los Angeles for Game 1 of the World Series.

Don’t worry, if the Yankees end up winning the World Series, whether it’s against the Dodgers or another team, I will still let you have some champagne since I will need someone to celebrate with, and you can still attend the parade with me, since I will need someone to take pictures.

I would say I would do the same for you if the Dodgers win the World Series, but we’re talking about a team whose manager batted a career .242 hitter third in the World Series, didn’t start Cody Bellinger or Max Muncy in postseason games because of left-handed starters and kept using the same middle reliever in high-leverage situations in the World Series even though he allowed every inherited runner to score in the series. As long as Roberts is the manager of the Dodgers, I don’t think I have to worry about them ending their World Series drought.

If there’s no World Series meeting between the Yankees and Dodgers, we’ll have to do this in 2022 when the teams meet again. Maybe by then Andrew Friedman will have built a bullpen for you and Brian Cashman will have built a rotation for me.

Brittni: Roberts might be the only thing we have ever agreed on regarding the Dodgers. As long as he’s in charge, my path and the Dodgers’ path to a championship is impeded.

Roberts is a very zen, Cali-forn-i-a-style manager. He isn’t scary, he never gets upset and it’s very “Yeah, bro … life is good … I live in sunny SoCal where it’s always 70 degrees” with him. I need heat, I need passion, I need a manager who is fearful. I need this because in the last two years I’ve watched the Dodgers lose back-to-back World Series and it a lot of it had to with Roberts’ in-game decisions and his nonchalant demeanor after the losses.

We may be getting ahead of ourselves when it comes to a Dodgers-Yankees World Series meeting. I know you don’t believe in jinxes, but they do exist. A Dodgers-Yankees World Series didn’t work out the last two years and the Astros and Braves could easily prevent it from happening again. It would be great to finally get this matchup and it would be even greater to have it go seven games, it’s just that a lot of things need to happen to get there.

I’d like to think we are older and wiser now since our last email exchange six years ago, but we placed a bet in which the loser of the weekend series has to eat two Dodger dogs from the ampm store. It makes me wonder what our bet will be if our teams do end up playing each other in the World Series.

But the more and more I think about it, I’m not sure I want a World Series against you, let alone one that goes seven games. If the Dodgers were to lose, you would hang that over my head for our entire marriage. I thought the rides home from Dodger Stadium on Friday and Sunday nights were bad enough, I don’t know how I would handle a Yankees championship at the expense of the Dodgers and a championship for you at the expense of me.

***

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is available!

The Yankees got a much-needed series win against the Red Sox over the weekend for just their third series win of the season. But things on this 10-game homestand don’t get any easier with the next seven games against the defending champions in the Royals and the team with the best record in the American League in the White Sox coming to the Bronx.

With the World Series champion Royals in town for a four-game series, Max Rieper of Royals Review joined me to talk about the Royals’ championship season, having former Yankees on the Royals, once again having a vaunted bullpen like the Yankees, Luke Hochevar’s career and expectations for this season following a championship.

Keefe: I would first like to thank you, the 2015 Royals and all Royals fans from preventing the Mets from winning the World Series. I have always said my biggest fear as a sports fan is a Red Sox-Mets World Series because someone would have to win and luckily I was just over a month old when that did happen in 1986 and wasn’t worried about it. The 2015 Royals will always have a special place in my heart.

After losing the 2014 World Series in Game 7, the Royals returned to the World Series to beat the Mets in five games. And the Royals didn’t just beat them, they absolutely devastated them with late-game comebacks and heart-breaking losses. It was beautiful.

My World Series drought is now six seasons and it’s looking like seven if the Yankees don’t turn it around quickly to even contend for a playoff spot this season. No Royals fan wants to hear about that though after a 30-year championship drought in Kansas City.

What was it like to finally win the World Series again? How did you celebrate?

Rieper: It was interesting, the way the Royals lost the 2014 World Series with the game-tying run just 90 feet away and Madison Bumgarner on the mound in relief on short rest, it might have been devastating for some fan

bases. But I think we were all so thrilled just to be in the post-season, it didn’t sink in how achingly close we came to winning it all until the next spring.

In 2015, the fans and the team were set on winning a championship from day one. And the Royals really had a magical season, the kind where all the breaks go your way. They got off to a hot start and pretty much coasted to the Central division title. Things looked a bit bleak in the ALDS against Houston when they trailed by four runs in Game Four, but with the way this team has battled back before, it wasn’t that big of a surprise when they stormed back. From the on, it seemed like the Royals were a team of destiny, and the Blue Jays and Mets were just speed bumps along the way.

The championship was just a great validation for sticking with the team for all these years. I have been a fan since the late 80s, so I witnessed two decades of absolutely terrible baseball. The championship was like an absolution, like the baseball world was welcoming us back to the club of having a regular baseball team, not a god awful embarrassment you were ashamed of.

Keefe: The Royals now have former Yankees Chien-Ming Wang and Ian Kennedy on their team. Wang, a two-time 19-game winner for the Yankees was the ace of the staff from 2005/2006 (depending who you ask) through 2008. Kennedy, was a top prospect, who had a weird parts of three seasons with the Yankees from 2007-2009 before bouncing around the league.

Now Wang is in the Royals bullpen at age 36 and Kennedy has been the Royals’ best starter this season.

What are your thoughts on the two former Yankees?

Rieper: I have been a fan of Ian Kennedy for a few years now, and the Royals have been linked to him several times, so it was no surprise when they signed him. However, even I was surprised by how much they spent on a guy with pretty underwhelming numbers the last few years in San Diego. Some of that is attributable to his flyball tendencies and Petco Park getting reconfigured so that it was actually a bit of a home run park last year. Moving to Kauffman Stadium should help depress those home run numbers quite a bit. He also played in front of an atrocious defensive outfield last year, so I’m sure he’s already glad to be playing in front of Alex Gordon, Lorenzo Cain, and Jarrod Dyson, perhaps the best defensive outfield in baseball.

Chien-Ming Wang seemed like a joke of a signing when the Royals inked him to a minor league deal last year. After all, he hasn’t been in the big leagues since 2013, was terrible last year in Triple-A, and is 36 years old. But apparently he went to pitching guru Ron Wolforth last year, and was able to increase his velocity into the low- to mid-90s. Dayton Moore has had a pretty good track record finding reclamation projects for the bullpen, and Wang could be another feather in that cap.

Keefe: The Yankees and Royals have had similar pitching problems to begin the season: the starting pitching has been inconsistent and the bullpen has been dominant. The Yankees and Royals easily have the top two bullpens in the game with Dellin Betances and Andrew Miller, and now Aroldis Chapman, who is back on Monday, and Kelvin Herrera and Wade Davis.

It seems like every team that wins the World Series becomes the formula for success and everyone wants to copy them. The Yankees always had a dominant bullpen in their late-90s/early-2000s dynasty and the Royals have boasted one the last two years in their World Series appearances.

I have been spoiled by the Mariano Rivera era ending and going right into this era, so it’s hard for me to know what it’s like for a fan base to be worried about protecting the lead. Are you ever worried with the back end of your bullpen?

Rieper: Royals fans were put in an unfamiliar situation to begin this season when Joakim Soria, who was anointed the eighth-inning guy, struggled mightily, which cost them some games. However, with the depth they have, they were able to reshuffle the order to give Kelvin Herrera the eighth, and go with Soria and Luke Hochevar in the seventh, and since then the pen has looked much better.

To have a great pen gives fans a feeling of invincibility, that if the Royals can just get to the seventh inning with a lead, the game is over. It also helps facilitate late-inning comebacks, which the Royals have been great at the last few years. However, the fan base does tend to get spoiled. Whenever any reliever gives up a run, some fans panic and think something has gone terribly wrong. You also have to wonder how long the invincibility can last. We know relievers can be volatile, and not even Wade Davis can be this obscenely good for this long. Can he?

Keefe: I used to love when the Yankees were playing the Royals and Luke Hochevar was starting because it meant about as close to a sure-thing for a win in baseball as you can have. The No. 1 overall pick in the 2006 draft spent six seasons as a starter for the Royals, pitching to an ERA over 5 and I could never understand why the Royals kept giving him chance after chance after chance.

In 2013, he became a reliever, pitched to a 1.92 ERA and struck out 82 in 70 1/3 innings. He had gone from failed starter to dominant reliever like so many had before him and it only makes you wonder why the Royals didn’t make this move earlier.

What has been like to watch Hochevar turn his career and change the narrative as a failed No. 1 overall pick?

Rieper: The evolution of Luke Hochevar is actually not that dissimilar to the evolution of Wade Davis. Davis was a throw-in to the James Shields trade, and expected to be a mid-rotation starter. He was god awful as a starter in 2013, and at the end of the year, the Royals asked him to work on relieving. He had some success in Tampa Bay as a reliever, but the Royals had no idea they had the nastiest, most dominating reliever in the game waiting in the wings.

Luke Hochevar started so many years mostly out of necessity, since the other options were has-beens like Sidney Ponson and never-weres like Sean O’Sullivan. Once they acquired James Shields and Wade Davis, they felt like they had a full rotation and Hochevar had run out of chances. It soon became apparent that in shorter stints, he could amp up his fastball and rely more on his bending curveball. Like many dominant relievers — including Andrew Miller — Davis and Hochevar had to first struggle as lousy starting pitchers.

Keefe: Last year at this same time, you told me about the 2015 Royals, “It’s still a team that worries me to due to its lack of depth among hitters, and the starting pitching woes, but the hot start has convinced me they could be in the mix all season and give us another exciting run.” Well, looks like you were right.

After the first championship in 30 years and back-to-back World Series appearances, the Royals are once again the defending AL champions. They successfully handled having a target on their back all last season and now have to play the same way again this season.

What are your expectations for this season coming off a World Series win?

Rieper: My expectation was that the Royals would be in the mix again, especially with no American League team seemingly pulling away from the rest during the offseason. The AL seems to be filled with mediocrity this year, especially with several teams I expected to contend — the Yankees, Astros, and Blue Jays — all off to slow starts. The Royals have been in a bad slump lately, but still find themselves around .500, with plenty of time to get back to their winning ways.

There are some red flags however. The areas where they were so dominant last year — the bullpen and defense — are still good, but not as dominating as they once were. The starting pitching has looked lousy other than Ian Kennedy. Their strikeout rate, while still low in the league, is much higher than it was last year. Lorenzo Cain was off to a terrible start until recently. Alex Gordon has a ridiculously high strikeout rate. Kendrys Morales has looked lost at the plate. Alcides Escobar is doing his best to prove he is not a leadoff hitter. Omar Infante looks just about cooked. They just don’t seem to be doing the little things they did last year to win games at a terrific clip. It is too early to panic, but it would not surprise anyone to see the Royals have some post-championship hangover in 2016.

At some point this season the Yankees are going to win three games in a row. Right? Right?!?! RIGHT?!?!?!? Well, if they are, now would be a good time to do it for the first time with a huge three-game series against the Red Sox in the Bronx this weekend.

It’s been a while since I have done a Yankees-Red Sox email exchange with Mike Hurley of CBS Boston, but after going to Boston last week and actually watching a game with him, now felt like a good time for another one.

Keefe: Hello, Michael. It’s been a while. We haven’t done this lately because the Yankees were good, well not good, but decent, and the Red Sox sucked. Now it’s the other way around. Between that and your obsession with the air pressure in footballs, our sure-thing Yankees-Red Sox email exchanges have become as frequent as Chase Headley hits.

We didn’t do one last week for the season-opening series, which went about as well as my decision to order Domino’s after Saturday’s game. I attended the first two games of the series and watched Jackie Bradley Jr. (!) and David Ortiz add Friday night’s game to my long list of crushing losses at Fenway Park and then watched the Yankees get shut out against Rick Porcello the following night.

I know you have watched three last-place finishes in the last four years, so in the event that this Yankees season doesn’t right itself like every Yankees season has since 1993, what else should I do this summer? You are sort of at advantage since you have a one-year-old child, which is a little more important than watching baseball. So is that the answer? If the Yankees don’t start winning, do I need to have a kid? (Brittni is going to enjoy reading this for the first time.)

Hurley: You know, I’m maybe a little bit not normal, because most of the time, I loved watching those last-place teams. I mean, the Bob Valentine season was a trainwreck. You simply could not look away from that tire fire. And the fact that they kept Bob V. employed for the WHOLE SEASON is something for which I’ll be forever thankful, because he really drove that thing all the way into the ground, and he made idiotic comments the whole time. God, I miss Bob.

The past two years haven’t been as fun, just watching overpaid egomaniacs stink at a sport night in and night out. But I still watched. Not every single game — you tend to drop the weekend games on the priority list — but really, what else are you supposed to do on a Tuesday night in July? Go out to eat or enjoy someone’s company like a normal person? That’s just weird.

I don’t think you should have a kid, because I don’t think you’re in a good place right now. I watched you at Fenway, rage in your eyes, as you wanted to fight everyone in your section and then run onto the field and pummel Chase Headley. You were in a bad way, and I’m not sure even the miracle of life could pull you out of that hole. You’re in the thick of it now, and you’ll be there until the end of September.

Keefe: Maybe I wouldn’t be so down on the Yankees if they weren’t seven games under .500 or if they didn’t sign or play Chase Headley. For all the crap I gave Stephen Drew when he was a Yankee (and rightfully so), Drew was hitting .177/.274/.419 with three doubles, four home runs and 10 RBIs at this point last season. Headley is hitting .153/.253/.153 with no extra-base hits and two RBIs. He has scored two runs this season. TWO! There are seven pitchers with more than two RBIs and two pitchers with more than two runs scored. Headley is making $13 million this season (or $80,246.91 per game) and next season and the season after that.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox have their own third baseman who sucks in Pablo Sandoval, who they owe $17 million to this year and next, and then $18 million in 2018 and 2019, and then the $5 million buyout that’s going to happen in 2020. But at least the Red Sox started by putting Sandoval on the bench and then put him on the disabled list and then he underwent this mysterious season-ending surgery, so they won’t have to deal with their $95 million problem until next year.

I think it’s time Chase Headley has a season-ending “surgery”. Either that or I desperately need him to start taking performance-enhancing drugs.

Hurley: I vaguely remember Headley hitting 31 homers and driving in 115 runs four years ago. It seems like something that just did not ever happen though. Zero extra-base hits in a MONTH is unfathomable for a corner infielder. It’s unfathomable for a catcher or a second baseman, even.

Do you ever wonder how different things would be if the team was at least run with the same principles that Steinbrenner held? I mean, yeah, he was liable to lose mind from time to time, but he also wouldn’t put up a third baseman who is incapable of hitting a double, and he wouldn’t roll out a Gardner-Ellsbury-Corpse Of Carlos Beltran outfield, and he wouldn’t have had Didi Gregorious serve as the successor to Derek Jeter. (And he wouldn’t have allowed Joe Kelly to take a selfie with Derek Jeter, and he wouldn’t have allowed the Red Sox to force Derek Jeter to hang out with Rico Petricelli, and he wouldn’t have allowed the Red Sox to give Derek Jeter a pair of boots.)

Anyway, Pablo Sandoval represents the biggest waste of money in history. He was fat, and you can get away with it in your 20s. But I can attest to the fact that it’s tough being fat as you approach 30. Muscles that have been strained for quite some time don’t exactly hold up the way you want them to, and all of a sudden you’re out for six months because you got injured doing something that most people do with no issue. I may pretend to be an expert on many other topics, but on this one, I’m legit.

The Red Sox and Yankees probably should just swap third basemen. Neither team would improve, but at least the stench and foul feelings toward the initial signings will fade some.

Keefe: I remember when Chase Headley was a free agent after the 2014 season that the Red Sox were a potential suitor for him. Why couldn’t this have happened? The same way Bruins fans wanted Dan Girardi a couple years ago, there were actual Red Sox fans that wanted Headley to be their third baseman.

I have always felt like the Yankees should just play A-Rod at third and then Beltran can DH and there’s no need for Headley. If A-Rod gets hurt playing third base, whatever. He’s 40 and doesn’t exactly have a long career ahead of him. What are they protecting him from? Before last season, they told him he didn’t have a spot on the team and the Yankees pretended like he didn’t exist at the Stadium on YES or on social media. Then he became the team’s best hitter and now it’s all A-Rod all the time across all of the Yankees’ media channels. A-Rod might be the only thing bringing people to the Stadium in July if this team is 20 games back.

With A-Rod’s contract ending next season and David Ortiz retiring at the end of this season, we are less than two seasons away from having no links to the 2003-2004 chapter of the rivalry. It’s time someone steps up and says, “Enough is enough” and reignites this war. I need fastballs getting away from pitchers on both teams starting this weekend. It’s time to make Yankees-Red Sox great again.

Hurley: It’s sad, really. The other night, Buchholz let one fly up in to Jose Abreu after Abreu hit a bomb in his first at-bat. Then Travis Shaw got hit by Carlos Rodon, and it was kind of like, “…. is this happening? Is it on?” But it wasn’t. That was it. It’s never “on” anymore. That part of baseball has been removed. I really think Ron Artest ruined everything for every sport. Can’t have any more disputes, everything must be swell, and we’re going to give the umpires the power to issue warnings whenever they feel like it. It’s why it was no big deal when David Price joined the Red Sox. His “history” with David Ortiz involved a lot of pointing and yelling. So bad.

The 2003-04 point is sad, too. What’s crazy is that 2004 was Ortiz’s eighth year in the majors, and it was A-Rod’s 11th season (ninth full season), yet they’re the only two active players left from anybody that played in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS. As it relates to A-Rod and Ortiz specifically, we both know their long, healthy careers are thanks to a healthy diet and proper exercise, but I still find that pretty remarkable that everybody else faded out relatively quickly. I feel like Bronson Arroyo is the only other person to play in the past few years.

It’s cute that you think some fire might ignite this weekend. Mean Rick Porcello, Ferocious David Price, and the intimidating Steven Wright are going for the Red Sox. I’m already shaking in my boots!

Keefe: I don’t think anything will actually happen, but it would be nice if it would. It would be nice if David Price got frustrated with making $1 million per start and getting lit up every time he takes the mound and decided to take his frustration out on one of the Yankees.

When it comes to Price, he will be making $30 million this year and the next two. And then he can opt out of his contract and give up $31 million in 2019 and $32 million in 2020, 2021 and 2022. Red Sox fans justified the signing by saying, “Yeah, but it’s really only a three-year deal.” If Price sucks in those three years, or really just Year 3, he’s not going to opt out. And if he continues to be an “ace” and does opt out, he will either get more money from the Red Sox or leave them without an ace for more money from another team. It’s the CC Sabathia opt out/contract extension all over again. I guess what I’m saying, is I’m looking forward to 37-year-old David Price making $32 million and throwing in the mid-80s.

Hurley: I was thinking about that recently. Maybe he’ll just stink and play out the deal. What a nice life that would be.

But realistically, he’ll probably be all right, and salaries will continue to rise, so he’ll probably opt out and go somewhere else to some stupid team that would dedicate insane resources to a pitcher well past his prime. Do you know any teams like that?

His April numbers historically stink, and he’s got a pretty deep track record in the AL East. So he’ll be fine. I’m still not sure what they’ll get out of him in October, if they can get there, but I think ultimately they’ll be in a much better spot with David Price than without him — for the next three years. If he doesn’t opt out, we can have another discussion.

Keefe: The Yankees aren’t good, but no one in the AL East is, and that’s why at seven games under .500, the Yankees are only six games out despite being the worst they have been since 1991. The Red Sox are 16-11 and currently in first, but they’re also 10-10 in games against every team other than the Yankees and Braves. The Orioles and Blue Jays have similar pitching problems and the Rays can’t hit. We’re a long ways away from the days of the Yankees battling for the first division title and ONLY wild card and now we’re in an era where every team has a fighting chance until the final weeks of the season.

After this weekend, the Yankees and Red Sox don’t meet again until the first series after the All-Star break. So until then, the only email you will get from me will be one asking for recommendations for TV shows to binge-watch on Netflix if my baseball season isn’t saved soon. Maybe if this trend continues next season even after Mark Teixeira, Carlos Beltran and CC Sabathia come off the books, maybe then it will be time to have a kid.

Hurley: Oh my God, please don’t do that. People around here did that the past two years. “Well the Red Sox aren’t very good, but they’re only 7 games out of first place, and if the Orioles lose a few… ” No. Don’t do it. Bad teams are bad teams are bad teams. There’s no need to delude yourself and get your hopes up.

Also, don’t have a kid. Please. Thank you.