The Athletic | Branden Kuty ($): In the midst of their summer slide, the Yankees seemed to course-correct, running down the best record in baseball across the season’s final third or so. Kuty takes us behind a players-only meeting where veteran Giancarlo Stanton stood alone in the room and lit the proverbial fire under everyone else’s ass. How much of that actually impacted the Yankees’ stretch run is up for debate, but down 0-2 in the ALDS to the Blue Jays, it may be time for another such speech.
The club has gained a reputation for not always being the biggest fighters when they’re down, and they’re about as down as you can be right now.
Baseball America | Matt Eddy: All of the focus is on Game 3 in the Bronx tonight, but we have a pair of regular season awards to deal with before first pitch. Aaron Judge has been named Baseball America’s 2025 Major League Player of the Year, with his prodigious mix of contact and all-time power giving him the edge over Cal Raleigh. One wonders if that will be the same logic applied to the AL MVP announcement in a month’s time.
MLB.com | Theo DeRosa & Shanthi Sepe-Chepuru: Judge was also nominated for the 2025 Hank Aaron Award as the AL’s best offensive player, which he also won in 2022 and 2024. There are nine other nominees, including Raleigh and Cleveland superstar José Ramírez, but it’s certainly difficult to make the case that anyone in 2025 — and few in the history of baseball — had a better pure offensive season than Judge.
New York Daily News | Peter Sblendorio: Now we turn to the main event of the evening, where Carlos Rodón will be tasked with being the tip of the spear of this 0-2 ALDS comeback. While Carlos wasn’t quite at his best in the second game of the Wild Card Series against Boston, the club has full confidence in the man who is seen as the No. 1B, and maybe we’ll see a diamond emerge under all this pressure. One way or another, I’m setting the over/under on shirt changes for Rodón at 2.5.
