New York Post | Mark W. Sanchez: Gerrit Cole caused quite a stir when he hit Rafael Devers in the first inning and then issued an intentional walk in the next game on Saturday, but now Alex Cora is under scrutiny. The Red Sox manager insinuated that Brayan Bello was intentionally trying to hit Aaron Judge when he threw behind the Yankees captain later in the game. MLB has now launched an investigation into Cora’s comments, and the punishment could include a suspension if it turns out that Cora instructed his pitchers to intentionally throw at Yankees batters.

Baseball America | Josh Norris: Spencer Jones and the Patriots from Double-A Somerset just finished their regular season, and the Yankees’ top prospect has a questionable record. His 200 strikeouts are the most by a Yankees minor leaguer in franchise history and just six fewer than Elijah Green, who has the most strikeouts in MiLB this season. Jones began the year needing to make more contact, and while strikeout rates have generally increased in the minors, he’s arguably even further from a finished product than he was at the start of the season.

New York Daily News | Gary Phillips: Ian Hamilton missed nearly three months with a lat injury, but the 2023 breakout relief pitcher has been back to his best since returning from injury. He has three scoreless games under his belt, striking out six of the 11 batters he faced, and the right-hander’s rediscovery of form couldn’t come at a better time for the Yankees. New York recently adopted a closer-by-committee approach, and a resurgent Hamilton gives them another weapon to use in any high-pressure situation.

The Athletic | Brendan Kuty ($): Austin Wells has positioned himself as the favorite in the AL Rookie of the Year race, and he owes that success in part to his study of the Yankees’ illustrious history at the catcher position. From Bill Dickey to Yogi Berra to Elston Howard to Thurman Munson to Jorge Posada, Wells said the most important lesson of all is the hard work it takes behind the scenes every day. Wells hopes to one day be mentioned in that pantheon, specifically highlighting the consistency that allowed his predecessors to play the majority of games each year and, in the case of Dickey, Berra and Posada, that each of them played at least 17 major league seasons.

The Athletic | Rustin Dodd ($): With the end of the regular season less than two weeks away, award discussions are heating up. Aaron Judge and Bobby Witt Jr. are the clear favorites for AL MVP. As statisticians have refined the formulas for WAR and voters have deepened their understanding of the metric, the MVP race has become more like an award for achieving the highest WAR. Voters are less interested in conventional metrics, outstanding stories surrounding a player or the player’s impact on his team’s results, relying instead on WAR to capture lesser-known factors like defense and baserunning. With that in mind, the race for AL MVP will likely be much closer this year than it was a decade ago, when Judge was the clear MVP with his league-record 53 home runs and 132 RBIs.