Hey, it's Zack.
Before I get into Baltimore I want to highlight the players who owned the month of July. Two hitters. Two pitchers. All four had months worth remembering.
JULY PERFORMERS
Yordan Alvarez | Houston Astros | DH
.360 average. 9 home runs. 22 RBI. AL Player of the Month. His July helped push the Astros from third place in the AL West to first. The best hitter in baseball had his best month of the season at exactly the right time.
CJ Abrams | Washington Nationals | SS
.348 average. 10 home runs. 23 RBI. 6 stolen bases. NL Player of the Month. First career Player of the Month Award in the middle of the best stretch of his career.
Dylan Cease | Toronto Blue Jays | SP
1.00 ERA. 46 strikeouts in 36 innings. AL Pitcher of the Month. He is firmly in the AL Cy Young conversation and July was his best month yet.
Chris Sale | Atlanta Braves | SP
4-0. 2.00 ERA. 34 strikeouts in 27 innings. NL Pitcher of the Month for the sixth time in his career. Sale is 37 years old and still one of the best pitchers in baseball.
Now let's talk about Baltimore.
Last week I was in Baltimore for Chris Davis's induction into the Orioles Hall of Fame. Here is what I took from it.
THE ENTRANCE
Chris Davis was inducted into the Orioles Hall of Fame on August 1 at Camden Yards. He was joined by former pitcher Storm Davis and late scout Jim Russo. For anyone who watched Baltimore baseball from 2011 through 2016 this was a day worth celebrating.
Chris hit 53 home runs in 2013 and led the majors. He hit 47 in 2015 and led the majors again. He is the only player in Orioles history to hit 40 or more home runs in multiple seasons. He signed the largest contract in franchise history. He gave everything he had to that city and that organization for a decade.
Those are Chris Davis's numbers during his best years in Baltimore. But they do not tell you everything about the team around him and the culture that was built with him as one of the leaders.
Early on we had a good mix of veterans and young players. Buck Showalter created a culture of accountability that pushed all of us. A lot of the younger guys on that team had struggled. We had been sent down to the minors. We had been written off. We had been told in one way or another that we were not good enough. And we had all fought our way back to get another chance.
When you share that kind of experience with people it creates a bond that is hard to explain. We knew what the bottom felt like and none of us wanted to go back there. When the winning started happening we kept that same underdog mentality because we had all earned it the hard way. We were a tight group.
THE DELIVERY
The luncheon was on July 31. Tommy Hunter gave the introduction speech.
Tommy and Chris go back further than Baltimore. They were teammates and roommates with the Texas Rangers before they ever put on an Orioles uniform. They came over together in the same trade in July 2011 and picked up right where they left off. Tommy has a natural way of drawing people in with his stories. His humor is genuine and it lands without him trying. In this case he got the balance exactly right. The right amount of humor. The right amount of admiration. By the time he was done you understood exactly what Chris Davis means to the people who played alongside him.
Chris spoke about his successes and his struggles. He talked about the people who stuck with him through both. His hitting coach Scott Coolbaugh. His manager Buck Showalter. His college coach Skip Johnson. The people who put in the work with him every single day and rarely get the credit for it. That is what his speech was really about. The people behind the player.
What Chris has given back to Baltimore away from the field reflects who he is as a person. He and his wife donated three million dollars to the University of Maryland Children's Hospital in 2019. A personal cause that came from a personal place. He was a three time Orioles nominee for the Roberto Clemente Award. That kind of recognition does not come from writing a check. It comes from showing up.
On the field, watching Chris hit home runs during those years was something I will never forget. Every time he stepped into the batter's box you felt like something could happen. That feeling is rare. I have been around a lot of great players and very few of them had that quality. I was with the Yankees in 2022 when Aaron Judge chased and broke Roger Maris's AL home run record and the Yankees franchise record hitting 62 that year. Watching Judge do that was one of the most remarkable things I have seen in baseball. Watching Chris at his peak was right there with it. Both of them had the ability to change the feeling in a stadium every single time they stepped up to the plate.
Matt Wieters was there. Darren O'Day. TJ McFarland. Craig Gentry. Brad Brach. Adam Jones. Tommy Hunter. Former teammates who came back to be part of the day. When you look around a room and see those faces it hits you in a way that is hard to describe. We went through a lot together. Seeing everyone there for Chris felt right.
THE SAVE
I got back to my hotel that night and sat with everything for a while.
I thought about how fortunate I have been. To play this game for as long as I did. To have shared a locker room with the people who were there. Things you take for granted while you are living them become much clearer with some distance.
We had dinner after the luncheon and the conversations went late. Former players talking about what it was like to play and what it has been like since. The adjustments that come with leaving the game. The struggles that come with retirement are real and they are shared. It was good to be together and realize that nobody goes through any of it alone. That is what the bond between teammates actually looks like when you step away from the game.
Being around the guys again made me think of Brian Matusz. Chris and I spoke about him briefly. Both of us felt it. The emptiness and the sadness that does not go away when his name comes up. Brian was a teammate and a close friend for a long time who passed away in January of last year. He struggled. He had his demons. But he was a good person and a great teammate and he cared deeply about the people and children of Baltimore. The conversation we had at dinner that night was exactly the kind of conversation he needed to hear. Guys being honest about the hard parts. About the struggles that come after the game ends. About not being alone in it. I wish he could have been there for it. We all miss him.
And in a strange way that sadness made the day feel even more meaningful. Being together again with these guys. Knowing what we all went through together. The bond between teammates does not end when the career does. It just changes. Chris Davis deserved that day. I am glad I was there for it.
Talk soon, Z
The Save is a personal newsletter based on my own experiences, opinions, and recollections. The opinions expressed here are mine alone and do not represent any team, organization, union or employer past or present. When discussing players, contracts or organizational decisions I am sharing my perspective as a former player — not making legal or financial claims. When I share stories involving others I am telling them from my point of view. When I share tips or lessons I am sharing what worked for me. Always do your own research and consult professionals when making important decisions.