My wife gave me a big hug today. My daughter started crying because she assumed that meant I’d been traded to another family.
- The ceremony to induct six new players into the Hall of Fame took place in Cooperstown on Sunday and here are highlights from all the speeches. This includes a very emotional speech by Brandy Hallaway, the widow of the late Roy Halladay. Also included is Mariano Rivera wondering why he always has to be last.
- Here are more highlights and photos from the ceremonies.
- David Schoenfield explains why all six are Hall-of-Famers.
- Bradford Doolittle calls Cooperstown a celebration of “the best of baseball.” He also offers a defense of the induction of Harold Baines along with other thoughts about the weekend in upstate New York.
- And then there’s this: the children of the late Curt Flood are campaigning to get Flood into Cooperstown. This is the part Hall drives me nuts—when induction is no longer an honor but it is when baseball stops insulting people by not inducting them. Still, it’s a solid profile of Flood and his relationship to his family. (h/t Yahoo Sports)
- There may have been six players inducted into Cooperstown this weekend, but Jon Tayler notes that the induction classes over the next several years could be small or even non-existent.
- Will Leitch lists the active player on each MLB team who is most likely to get inducted into Cooperstown.
- The Hall of Fame also gave out the J.G. Taylor Spink Award to writer Jayson Stark, and The Athletic has two profiles of why Stark was deserving of the award. One from his colleague Ken Rosenthal (who is getting the award one day) and one from Doug Glanville, who grew up reading Stark and then was covered by him as a player. (The Athletic sub. req.) Also, can I mention that Glanville being a rabid fan of Hall and Oates is . . . kinda cute? This article isn’t the first time I’ve read Glanville mentioning it.
- The Angels have released pitcher Matt Harvey. “The Dark Knight” signed a one-year, $11 million contract as a free agent this past winter.
- Fabian Ardaya explains what went wrong for Harvey in Anaheim and puts most of the blame on Harvey for not altering his approach (The Athletic sub. req.) in the light of his diminished pure stuff.
- Mark Townsend looks at Harvey’s descent and whether or not his career is over yet.
- Harvey wasn’t the only player who is looking for a new team after the weekend. The GIants designated pitcher Derek Holland for assignment.
- And the Rockies have designated first baseman Mark Reynolds for assignment. The 35-year-old Reynolds admitted he is considering retirement.
- The Giants have gone on a hot streak lately and have reached the .500 mark. The Giants are now just 2.5 games out of a Wild Card spot. As Buster Olney points out, this development puts the Giants front office in a very tricky spot as to whether or not to buy or sell at the trade deadline. (ESPN+ sub. req.)
- Tony Wolfe examines the success this year of Tigers closer Shane Greene, who is mentioned in many trade rumors at the moment, including to the Cubs. Some question as to whether Greene has been better this year or just luckier, but Wolfe doesn’t think there’s a simple answer there.
- The Orioles traded pitcher Andrew Cashner to the Red Sox, and Cashner said that if he’d have been traded to a team he didn’t want to play for, he was willing to sit out the rest of the season. That all became moot because Cashner wanted to play for Boston.
- Danny Vietti has some of the top deadline deals of all-time.
- Ben Lindbergh looks at how much baseball is changing in recent years and identifies five trends that could define how the game is played in the future. He also ranks each trend on whether it is good, bad or neutral for the future of the game.
- Wallace Matthews looks at the great season that Yankees infielder D.J. LeMahieu is having, how the Yankees got him and how the Rockies let him get away.
- The feud between Red Sox analyst Dennis Eckersley and Red Sox pitcher David Price continues with Eckersley responding to Price’s latest comments.
- Brewers All-Star pitcher Brandon Woodruff went on the IL with a strained oblique.
- The Angels also put pitcher Andrew Heaney on the injured list.
- Yankees first baseman Luke Voit took a 91-mph fastball to the chin. It seems he avoided any serious injury or a concussion, but we’ll see what happens going forward.
- Miriam Zuo looks at what recent research in psychology can tell us about the human nature of being a sports fan. Zuo writes that being a sports fan is mostly an irrational behavior and that’s mostly OK.
- Mets first baseman Pete Alonso had one of the best “snap your bat in two over your knee after striking out” highlights over the weekend.
- Blue Jays catcher Danny Jansen shaved off his mustache between at-bats on Friday night. It worked. He hit a two-run single after shaving.
- And finally, how many of these Hall-of-Famers can you identify from the words on their plaque in Cooperstown?
And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster.