Asked to summarize the first two months of his team’s rapidly disintegrating season, Red Sox manager Alex Cora shifted into a thousand-yard stare before Friday night’s series opener against the Yankees in the Bronx.

“Not great,” Cora said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Not great.”

It’s also a fitting description of this so-called rivalry, which has turned one-sided in recent years, with the Yankees distancing themselves from the sorry Sox in terms of both the AL East standings and October expectations.

That continued Friday night, as Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Anthony Volpe homered in the first inning to help the Yankees build an early seven-run lead en route to a 9-6 win, much to the delight of the 46,783 fans in attendance, the seventh sellout this season.

“Put the distance between us and the whole league,” said Chisholm, who went 3-for-5 with four RBIs and has homered twice in four games since coming off the injured list on Tuesday. “That’s what we really want to do. We not only want to win the division, we want to win in every category — we want to be the best team in MLB. That’s why we’re out here, trying to win the World Series.

“We already went there last year. We thought we had it and didn’t have it. So this year we’re going to make sure we have it.”

Along the way, they won’t have to worry about the Red Sox. This weekend marks the first 2025 meeting between the rivals, and the Yankees already have put Boston in the rearview mirror, building a 10 1⁄2-game cushion over Cora’s self-sabotaging crew.

The Yankees are 25-21 against the Sox since Boston last made the playoffs in 2021, but that relatively close margin doesn’t tell the story of where these two franchises wound up during that span — or the different directions they’re headed in now.

The Yankees (39-23) spent $307 million for what looks like the American League’s World Series favorite for a second straight year. The Sox (30-35) may have bought themselves a $249 million ticket to the AL East basement for the third time in four seasons.

Full disclosure: The Red Sox were my preseason pick to win the AL East (I relegated the Yankees to a wild-card berth). The December trade for Garrett Crochet was like getting a do-over with a healthy Chris Sale to front the rotation, the February signing of Alex Bregman was the perfect righty bat to smash pitches off the Green Monster and their three bright young prospects on the rise — Marcelo Mayer, Kristian Campbell and Roman Anthony — were the envy of the league.

Oops. I wasn’t the only one to get caught up in the Red Sox offseason hype, but it got exposed as way more fragile than originally thought.

On the flip side, we undersold the Yankees’ winter retooling — more commonly known as the Plan B pivot from Juan Soto.

Turns out, Brian Cashman not only had the better plan, but the Yankees possess the ultimate trump card in Aaron Judge, and thanks to Cashman putting a couple of former MVPs around him — Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger — no one even mentions Soto anymore, unless it’s to harass him during a Bronx visit.

With Max Fried subbing for the injured Gerrit Cole as the Yankees’ ace and Carlos Rodon pitching himself into Cy Young Award consideration, Aaron Boone & Co. are functioning at a level that Boone’s buddy Cora can only dream of these days, especially now that Bregman is out with a severe quadriceps strain and $313 million cornerstone Rafael Devers is still pouting over management banning him from third base.

What used to be a highly anticipated AL East showdown between two of baseball’s superpowers has devolved into a matter of survival for beaten-down Boston, as Cora is facing heat for a roster that can’t seem to get out of its own way.

The Red Sox committed two errors Friday night to bring their season total to 56, the most in the majors after owning that distinction the previous two years. They’ve also played in, and lost, the most one-run games (6-17).

It’s hard to imagine Cora taking the fall. He just signed a three-year extension last July worth $21.75 million that runs through the 2027 season, a deal that made him the second-highest-paid manager in the game. But other than Crochet, the rotation isn’t doing him any favors, and after Walker Buehler teed up five runs in the first inning Friday, the Sox have a 7.06 ERA in the first, the second-worst in the majors.

Compare that with Boone’s good fortune. The Yankees’ run differential (plus-102) is second-best in the majors, as compared to plus-10 for the Sox, which ranks 15th, and they’re the polar opposite of Boston in most categories. Entering Friday, their first-inning ERA was 3.10, good for fifth, and their .768 OPS with runners in scoring position was sixth (Boston’s .721 ranked 18th).

“I’m really not in the business right now of analyzing it,” Boone said of the rivalry before Friday’s game. “It’s the Red Sox. You do get up for these games and get excited for these series because it means a lot and there’s a lot of eyeballs on it. But also, in this chair, we’re tasked with trying to beat them. I’m not really focused on the level of it necessarily.”

Boone won’t say it, but the Red Sox are just another bumbling AL East patsy on the schedule that just happens to wear the same uniform as the Yankees’ ancient rival. Currently, the biggest threat to the Yankees is their Steinbrenner Field tenant, the $90 million vagabond Rays, and the perpetually fraudulent Blue Jays. Both are 5 1⁄2 games behind.

The Red Sox? Cora did say that he chatted with owner John Henry at the team hotel this week — the MLB owners’ meetings took place in midtown Manhattan — but did not believe Henry was staying for the series.

“He was going on his boat somewhere,” Cora said, referring to Henry’s $90 million superyacht, the Elysian.

Leaving his dysfunctional franchise to continue sinking in the Bronx.