BOSTON — The Yankees pulled into Fenway Park as one of baseball’s hottest teams at 42-25, coming off a sweep of the Royals in Kansas City. They left Boston not in tatters but certainly having taken a flesh wound or two. Three takeaways from what manager Aaron Boone characterized as a “tough weekend”:

Aaron Judge, obviously, has been the team MVP to this point of the season, but Fried is in the discussion. The lefthander has been everything the Yankees could have hoped for after signing him to an eight-year, $218 million free-agent contract — 9-2 with a 1.89 ERA after taking the loss Sunday, which fell far more on the offense than on him. Fried had a seamless transition into the clubhouse in spring training and quickly established himself as a leader on the pitching staff, with that role all the more important after Gerrit Cole’s season-ending injury. Rather than lamenting a lack of offense Sunday, Fried offered this after allowing  two runs and striking out nine in seven innings: “The way I see it is I needed to come out and be a little bit better and be able to match him [Boston’s Brayan Bello]. He was throwing a lot of zeros. In a game like that, I have to be better.” Though it probably flew under the radar publicly because of how the series went, comments like that go a long way in the clubhouse.

The reigning American League MVP, who got his first day of rest of the season when he was not in Thursday's starting lineup against the Royals (he struck out as a pinch hitter), has gone 1-for-13 with 10 strikeouts in the last four games. It is the very definition of a small sample size and not especially meaningful. Instead, it shows that even the best players, no matter how superhuman their efforts are at times, will have rough stretches during the course of the 162-game season. “Just had some swing and miss. They pitched him tough, obviously,”  Boone said. “Baseball, man. It’s why guys don’t hit .450 with 900 homers. You’re going to have a weekend where they execute and they get you.”

The  DH, who missed the entire spring training and the first 70 games of the regular season, is expected back Monday or Tuesday, Boone said over the weekend. And while Stanton won’t be in the lineup seven days a week, he isn’t being activated to play two days a week, either. Even without Stanton, juggling the daily lineup already has posed some difficulty, as either Ben Rice, Jasson Dominguez, Trent Grisham or Cody Bellinger has to sit. Boone has said that’s a good problem to have — and it is — because it’s the product of a relatively healthy roster combined with a glut of good players. Still, getting everyone enough at-bats so they don’t feel rusty will be a daily challenge.