If not for the Hall of Fame, would there have been any real, non-Holliday baseball news this week? And yet, here I am again with eight whole Filberts. What a wonderful world ...
- How can a Hall of Fame voter justify voting for a DH? According to Tangotiger, it shouldn't be hard at all.
- Intentional walks have a bad rap in my little corner of Baseball Land. But an intentional walk isn't inherently awful. Most of them are just sort of meh. Bleacher Report identifies the bad intentional walks -- the BIBBs -- and matches them to the managers who ordered them.
- Jonah Keri takes my Mark McGwire's "comeback" and Jonah -- never one to miss a trick -- runs with it.
- One more good thing about Andre Dawson's election: Tyler Kepner has a good excuse to write about the Expos.
- In my post about future Hall of Famers and their caps, I inadvertently left Roberto Alomar out of the discussion. I think it's an easy choice, though. Alomar spent three seasons with the Padres, three seasons with the Orioles, three seasons with the Indians ... and five seasons with the Blue Jays. He played well for Toronto in 29 postseason games, too. Easy choice.
- Do Albert Pujols and Matt Holliday constitute the best 3-4 combination in the majors? Among St. Louis baseball writers, the consensus is that they don't, with Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira taking the top spot and Milwaukee's Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun giving the two Cardinals a good fight.
- Today's Red Sox Special, for any fans worried about Adrian Beltre's hitting stats last season: a long highlight reel of his defensive brilliance.
- Speaking of the Red Sox, Gordon Edes reports that the Red Sox are still in the hunt for Cuban phenom Aroldis Chapman. I suppose he's not quite ready for the majors, but recall that the Red Sox already have six starting pitchers (and I'm not even counting Michael Bowden or Junichi Tazawa).
ABOUT THIS BLOG
David Schoenfield
Schoenfield is a senior writer for ESPN.com and been with ESPN since 1995, having served as baseball editor and Page 2 senior editor. Follow Dave on Twitter: @dschoenfield and the SweetSpot blog on Facebook.
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