When last Boston saw Cleveland, the Red Sox were rolling through the Indians, winning three of four games at Jacobs Field in late July. The only blemish for Boston during the series was a 1-0 loss.

Now it is almost two months since they last met. Boston finished the regular season with an overall 5-2 advantage over the Indians, but as Francona said, those four games in July don’t mean a whole lot as the teams square off in the ALCS.

“I don’t know if there are advantages or disadvantages [to be taken from the July series],” said manager Terry Francona. “It’s probably going to depend on how we play and how they play [in the ALCS, and not what happened in July]. We catch teams at periods during the year. I remember running through Detroit [in early July, the last series before the All-Star break] at a period and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that might be the best team in baseball.’ But then their bullpen got beat up a little bit,” said Francona of the Tigers, who failed to make the postseason.

“And then going through Cleveland [in July], even though we won, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, they’ve got a good team.’ I think health has something to do with that. They’re healthy [now]. Some of the younger players have some games under their belt. They’ve gone through some big series. I know they feel good about themselves.”

Cleveland manager Eric Wedge agreed with Francona. After failing to enjoy much success against the Yankees in the regular season, the Indians closed out the Yanks in New York. Now they’ll try to turn the tables in Boston.

“You start over. [There are] so many points in time over the course of a season where a ball club evolves or changes or gets better, but ultimately once you get down to the end, that’s the team that you are,” Wedge said. “As we moved into the postseason here we understood exactly where we were, and our guys do a good job of separating, whether it be from day to day or from certain situations or series that we’ve gone through before. That’s why you play 162 games. That’s the real grind. That’s the ultimate grind, the battle of the fittest and who’s going to be there in the end. Then once you get to the playoffs you continue to take it day by day and just a little bit longer than you do during the season, whether it be a five-game series or a seven-game series like we have here, and you just go out and play. You go out and play your game and let the results take care of themselves.”

-Steven Krasner