The Yankees and Red Sox got together for four games this past week and four of the least significant games in the standings for both teams in roughly 30 years.

Various networks did not get the memo as MLB Network had the game as its showcase before a Monday rainout, TBS used Tuesday night baseball to show the second game of a doubleheader and FOX’s Thursday night baseball series designed to go up against Thursday Night Football that does not exist for some aired the second game on Thursday.

Instead of airing games with the intensity of 2003, the games felt like the final weekend of the 1992 season when the Yankees finished with 76 wins and three games ahead of the last-place Red Sox in the penultimate seven-team AL East.

For the Yankees, there are meaningful moments within the game such as Michael King validating his quest to become a regular starting pitcher by pitching well in front of family or friends or Carlos Rodon finding something mechanical making the change and turning one of the best of his 13 starts in the first year of a six-year contract that was signed with the designs of him being the No. 2 guy behind Gerrit Cole on a team where September games set them up for the postseason.

Despite those positives, there is the underlying question of how both teams arrived at this point where September games are a race to avoid finishing last.

Since the AL East became a five-team division in 1995 (actually 1994 but yesterday was the 29th anniversary of Bud Selig postponing the season so let’s ignore that), the Yankees-Red Sox were 1-2 in the division in the following seasons 13 times.

Between 1998 and 2001 it was not much of a contest and who remembers that an 82-win Red Sox went dysfunctional down the stretch and barely avoided finishing under .500. In 2003 to 2005 it was the peak of the rivalry with those years involving Aaron Boone’s pennant winning homer, the Yankees epic choke in 2004 and the division race coming down to the last day after the Yankees sputtered around for most of the first half.

By 2017, the Red Sox had three championships under their belt and the Yankees were beginning a retooling they hoped would keep them going at this point. A year later, the Yankees won 100 games in Boone’s first year but wound up with the unfortunate circumstance of the Red Sox winning 108 times, three more times in the ALDS over the Yankees and another World Series.

The Yankees followed up 2018 with a 103-win 2019 highlighted by seemingly any injury replacement stepping in to fill the absence and keep the winning going.

In 2020 the 60-win season created numerous strange circumstances. The Yankees seemingly looked ready to roll by winning 16 of 22 to start, then were at .500, finished with 33 wins. While that unfolding, the Red Sox seemingly punted on the season in the first year under Chaim Bloom who was fired Thursday at lunch time. They opted to trade Mookie Betts to the Dodgers instead of engaging in the long-term contract negotiations the Yankees did with Aaron Judge, then lost manager Alex Cora to a suspension for his role in the Astros cheating scandal in 2017.

By 2021 the rivalry returned somewhat to notable status with the Red Sox edging a tedious Yankee team out by one game and earning the right for the one-game playoff. The Red Sox won that game, Boone said the gap had been closed on the Yankees and nowadays his comments are prescient.

Actually they are more than accurate, the league has zoomed past the Yankees, especially since last year’s All-Star break. By now it seems apparent the Yankees overachieved when they earned 1998 Yankee comparisons by going 64-28 at last year’s All-Star break.

The Yankees added little to the roster, went in without a proven solution in left field, never got more than 11 games over .500 and their streak of winning seasons is in jeopardy.

As for the Red Sox, they could not follow up their ALCS appearance with another winning season. They finished 78 games, made little effort to retain Xander Bogaerts, won some public respect back by signing Rafael Devers to a long-term contract.

Still the Red Sox lasted longer in the race than the Yankees, though not by much. The Red Sox were responsible for losses six through eight in the Yankees’ first nine-game skid since 1982 last month, completing the three-game sweep with a wild 6-5 victory decided on a Justin Turner hit in the ninth and a call at the plate going their way in the eighth.

Then they flopped in their prove-it moment by losing seven of 10 against the Dodgers and Astros and that seemingly finished them off. And by Thursday as the 12 pm news ended, the Red Sox opted to send Bloom packing after nearly four years of middling results at best, leaving some people 200 miles to the south wondering why Brian Cashman still runs the Yankees.

It the second straight time the Red Sox fired a GM type in a September home series against the Yankees. They did the same to Dave Dombrowski in 2019 less than a year after he built a World Series winner that required the trading of several prospects to attain.

At some point the intensity of Red Sox-Yankees will actually return and the networks will be correct in airing those games. Based on this year, it may not be anytime soon with a series of missteps by both front offices reducing those games to a race to avoid last place in the AL East.