One of the biggest Red Sox-Yankees series in years opens Friday night. See lineups and notes. | Y…

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One of the biggest Red Sox-Yankees series in years opens Friday night. See lineups and notes.

With just a half-game separating them behind the first-place Blue Jays in the AL East standings, the Yankees and Red Sox begin their final head-to-head set of the regular season on Friday night.

It’s one of the most consequential series in recent memory. The Red Sox have missed the playoffs in three straight and five of the last six seasons. The Yankees went to the World Series last year.

New York has a half-game advantage on Boston in the wild-card standings, but if the season ended today, both teams would make the postseason.

The Red Sox took three of four games against the Yankees in the Bronx last month but are coming off a .500 road trip following Wednesday’s 5-4 walk-off loss to the Athletics.

Yankees vs. Red Sox: Rivalry showdown will help shape AL playoff picture

Baseball’s most notorious rivalry is slated for its final regular-season chapter this weekend, with the Red Sox and Yankees set to open a crucial three-game set on Friday in Boston.

It promises to be a tantalizing showdown, one that might just be an appetizer for an October entree. The two clubs would match up in a postseason series as things currently stand, but there’s ample time for the deck to shuffle over the final few weeks.

The two teams are separated by just a half-game in the standings, even at 81 wins with Boston carrying an additional loss. Crucially, the Red Sox have already clinched the season-long tiebreaker over their rivals. Boston has clobbered New York so far this year, with an 8-2 record in 10 games against the Yankees, punctuated by an emphatic three-games-to-one series victory in the Bronx back in August.

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Sometimes the Yankees can be the stick, just as they were while taking two out of three from Houston and Toronto in consecutive series the first week of the month.

But the Yankees can also be the piñata, just as they were in The Bronx in dropping 12-2 and 11-1 games to Detroit on consecutive nights this week when the bullpen became combustible leading into Thursday’s series finale.

The Yankees had Cam Schlittler on the mound against the Tigers with José Caballero at shortstop for the second straight game, Aaron Judge in right field, Giancarlo Stanton at DH, Austin Slater in left field, Cody Bellinger in center, Ben Rice behind the plate, Paul Goldschmidt at first base after sitting for three of the previous four, and both Austin Wells and Trent Grisham on the bench.

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