Good morning.

Here are several links from the past week that will make your Monday a bit more bearable:

• Albert Pujols’s season may be over, reports Sports Illustrated’s Brian Kotloff:

After aggravating the foot injury that has plagued him all season, Albert Pujols was placed on the 15-day disabled list on Sunday with a partially torn plantar fascia ligament in his left foot.

 

Pujols has been told that the injury will cause him to miss the rest of the season, according to Yahoo! Sports’ Tim Brown.

The 33-year-old, who is owed $212 million from 2014 to 2021, has played through plantar fasciitis throughout the year, but had to be removed from Friday’s game after a ninth-inning single.

• The crowd that gathered under Cooperstown’s gloomy skies on Sunday afternoon saw three men – Jacob Ruppert Jr., Hank O’Day, and James “Deacon” White — get posthomously inducted into the Hall of Fame.
• The Yankees acquired Alfonso Soriano from the Cubs, reportedly over the objections of general manager Brian Cashman, and in his debut on Sunday afternoon the 33-year old outfielder went 4 for 5 and drove in the winning run with a ninth-inning single. Other trades of note, via MLB Trade Rumors, included the North Siders’ dealing starter Matt Garza to the Rangers and Brewers’ sending reliever Francisco “K-Rod” Rodriguez to the Orioles.
• ESPN Sweet Spot’s David Schoenfield opines that the Phillies ought to trade Chase Utley before the July 31 deadline.

• In the debut regular-season match-up between two Korean stars, Hyun-Jin Ryu walked Shin-Soo Choo to lead off the game, but the Dodgers eventually notched a 4-1 victory over the Reds on Saturday evening.
• In his piece entitled “The Biggest Comebacks in the Wild-Card Era,” Baseball Nation’s Grant Brisbee highlights the folly of certain teams in 2013 that believe they have a realistic shot at making the postseason.
• Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald, who had broken the story that Marlins hitting coach Tino Martinez had verbally and physically abused players, subsequently reported that the former big-league first baseman has resigned.
• You will not be disappointed reading in the Hardball Times Shane Tourteliotte’s recap of one of the zaniest games ever played:

The 27th anniversary of one of my favorite crazy games passed two days ago. It happened on July 22, 1986, between the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Mets. This Mets team had a certain penchant for playing crazy games. The previous year, they had a 19-inning marathon in Atlanta against the Braves, a Fourth of July game that ended at 4 a.m. on the fifth. Our Chris Jaffe has memorably declared it to have been the ultimate fan experience, the greatest game ever. . . .

What did this game have that was so bonkers? All will be revealed in good time, but I can offer a few teasers. It had one of the most serious brawls baseball has seen in the last half-century, one that spelled the beginning of the end of the career of a well-known player . . . who wasn’t even in it! It had two ejections in two separate incidents even before the brawl. It boasted protests lodged by both managers. And most notably, it had a lineup manipulation so astonishing, it got several paragraphs of analysis in The Book. The authors concluded that, yeah, it wasn’t a bad idea.

• Ben Horrow of Beyond the Boxscore gives major props to Ross Ohlendorf for embracing the “long man” role in the Nationals’ bullpen and, in particular, his recent, impressive six-inning, two-run relief appearance against the Dodgers.

• David Ortiz lost his cool on Saturday evening after a seventh-inning strikeout. After taking his frustrations out on a dugout phone, here is the brief, profanity-laced exchange between Big Papi and teammate Dustin Pedroia, who nearly got cut by the rain of bat shards.
• Speaking of Pedroia, Fangraphs’ Dave Cameron explains why the Red Sox were smart to give the dimunitive yet powerful second baseman a $100 million, seven-year contract extension.

That’s it. Have a walk-off week!