In the annals of modern baseball history, we’ve seen some pretty bad teams win division titles, with the 1973 Mets and 2005 Padres claiming flags with just 82 wins apiece. If there was a silver lining to the 1994 strike, it’s that it spared us the possibility of a sub-.500 team making the playoffs, as the 52-62 Rangers were the best of the AL Worst, er, West. Which brings us to today’s AL Central. With the Indians (17-18) having lost four in a row and eight out of 11, the division lacks a single team playing .500 ball. Cleveland nonetheless leads the pack, and the division as a whole has a collective 68-102 record and a .400 winning percentage, the worst in the majors.

To be fair, the AL Central did project to be the majors’ worst. Via our preseason Playoff Odds page, here are the aggregated projected standings for the six divisions:

And here’s how the divisions sat as of Wednesday morning:

The AL Central has become MLB’s black hole, sucking losses into its gravitational field. Currently, it’s the only division collectively below .500 (the NL Central has rallied over the past few days), and there’s now a 103-point difference in winning percentage separating them from the worst of the other five divisions. Coincidentally, their collective run differential is 103 runs worse than any other division’s as well.

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Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in Major League Baseball history, continental North America is fully accounted for on the no-hit front within a single season. The United States of America checked in with its first no-hitter of 2018 on April 18, when the A’s Sean Manaea held the Red Sox hitless in Oakland. Mexico got on the board for the first time last Friday, May 2, when the Dodgers’ Walker Buehler and three relievers no-hit the Padres during the Mexico Series opener in Monterrey. And on Tuesday night, Canada completed the sweep when the Mariners’ James Paxton no-hit the Blue Jays in Toronto.

Paxton, who was born and raised in Ladner, British Columbia, made history by becoming just the second Canadian-born pitcher to throw a no-hitter and the first to do so on Canadian soil. Toronto-born Dick Fowler, pitching for the A’s, no-hit the Browns on September 9, 1945 in Philadelphia. While we’re dispensing with ordinal trivia, it seems appropriate to mention that Paxton is third pitcher to throw a no-hitter at the Rogers Centre (previously the Skydome) after the A’s Dave Stewart (June 29, 1990) and the Tigers’ Justin Verlander (May 7, 2011); no Blue Jays pitcher has ever done it there. Paxton threw the sixth no-hitter in Mariners history, after Randy Johnson (June 2, 1990 against the Tigers), Chris Bosio (April 22, 1993 against the Red Sox), Kevin Millwood and five relievers (June 8, 2012 against the Dodgers), Felix Hernandez (a perfect game on August 15, 2012 against the Rays), and Hisashi Iwakuma (August 12, 2015 against the Orioles).

(While the record books are silent on the matter, Paxton is assumed to be the first pitcher to throw a no-hitter in a season where a bald eagle landed on him.)

Paxton was nearly unhittable the last time he took the mound, striking out 16 in seven shutout innings on May 2 against the A’s. In that contest, during which he threw 105 pitches, the 29-year-old southpaw got 31 swinging strikes, 25 of them via four-seam fastball, many of them at the top of the zone. On Tuesday, he was more efficient, needing just 99 pitches for the entire night, and inducing “only” 15 swings and misses, eight with the four-seamer. He got squeezed a bit at the top of the zone and walked three, but faced just two batters over the minimum thanks to a double play, and threw more than five pitches to just one batter. In only two innings did he use more than 12 pitches, and in four innings, he needed 10 or fewer pitches, including the eighth and ninth. Thus, when he needed to reach back for more gas, it was there. The pitch speed graph from Brooks Baseball tells the story:

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On Friday night, in just his third major-league start, Walker Buehler delivered on the promise that the Dodgers envisioned when they made him the 24th pick of the 2015 draft out of Vanderbilt. Pitching on a rainy night at Estadio de Beisbol Monterrey, in the opener of the three-game Mexico Series, the 23-year-old righty held the Padres hitless for six innings while striking out eight and walking three. But with his pitch count at 93, one short of his professional high, manager Dave Roberts did not waver in his decision to put the brakes on the kid’s bid for a slice of baseball immortality.

Via the Orange County Register’s Bill Plunkett, Beuhler said that Roberts “told me I was out of pitches and I was out of the game.”

This wasn’t the first time that Roberts pulled a starter who had yet to allow a hit, but it was the first time that his decision paid off in full, as relievers Yimi Garcia, Tony Cingrani,and Adam Liberatore each chipped in a hitless inning, thus completing the 12th combined no-hitter in big-league history and the first in franchise history. Prior to that — and jusy five games into his managerial career, on April 8, 2016 — Roberts had removed Ross Stripling after 7.1 innings of hitless ball against the Giants. The 26-year-old Stripling, who himself was making his major-league debut, had thrown 100 pitches and had walked four batters when Roberts called for the bullpen. Having missed all of 2014 due to Tommy John surgery, he understood the precautionary move, even though it backfired, as reliever Chris Hatcher promptly gave up a game-tying home run to the next batter, and the Dodgers eventually lost.

Things worked out better for the team when Roberts pulled 36-year-old Rich Hill after seven perfect innings on September 10 of that year. Though Joe Blanton surrendered a single with two outs in the eighth, the Dodgers did get the win.

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The Mets may have dodged a bullet, or they may have experienced their most Mets-like moment of the 2018 season — with that franchise, you can never be sure. On Wednesday night at Citi Field against the Braves, after he was seen wincing during a third-inning swing of the bat and again following a fourth-inning pitch, Jacob deGrom departed with what was soon characterized as a hyperextended right elbow. The good news, revealed in manager Mickey Callaway’s Thursday morning press conference, is that a postgame MRI revealed no structural damage to the elbow. No torn ligaments, in other words. Whew.

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Nonetheless, almost immediately, confusion reigned in Queens. The New York Daily News‘ Kristie Ackert initially reported that, via Mets sources, deGrom “is expected to miss at least four starts with the hyperextended elbow.” But shortly afterwards, multiple reporters tweeted that deGrom had been cleared to make his next start on Monday. Hardly the finest hour for a team that’s attempting to change its reputation for turning injury management into a punchline.

As Ackert later explained, “I was told by sources there was a much bleaker outlook on deGrom earlier this morning. I reported what I was told, my bad. The #mets are cautiously optimistic he will make his next start and so is deGrom.” SNY’s Andy Martino bolstered that account by saying that sources told him that the team would prepare deGrom but “haven’t made any decision to scratch him yet.”

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Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Alex Rodriguez: at some point soon, Albert Pujols will join this exclusive company, the list of players who have attained both the 3,000-hit and 600-home-run milestones. With a home run and a double off Dylan Bundy on Wednesday night, the 38-year-old slugger is at 2,998 hits after collecting just four in his previous seven games. His mid-April hot streak, such as it was, is a memory.

Baseball’s major milestones and records are supposed to be opportunities to celebrate careers, the totality of a player’s accomplishments, the road he took along the way, and the connection to history. But as they tip their caps, too often they remind us that the man we’re cheering is far from the player he once was. In Pujols’ case, the difference is particularly striking, as it’s almost impossible to fathom the gap between “the best player of this young millennium” and “the worst regular in the majors,” or how a single player might hold both titles at the same time. Any honest reckoning with his career, however, will take us to this uncomfortable place.

The Pujols who earned the first of those titles is the one we’ll be celebrating when hit number 3,000 drops. That guy — a powerful but bad-bodied 13th-round 1999 pick out of Maple Woods Community College who rocketed three levels in his lone minor league season and was in the majors by 2001 — is the stuff of legend. Pujols’ All-Star and unanimous NL Rookie of the Year-winning debut (.329/.403/.610, 37 HR, 130 RBI) began an amazing 11-year run during which he hit a combined .328/.420/.617 while averaging 40 homers, 121 RBIs and 7.4 WAR, made nine All-Star teams, won three MVP awards and a batting title, with 19 top-three slash-stat finishes. In 2006, -08 and, -09, he led the league in slugging percentage, wRC+,and WAR. His 81.4 WAR for that span was 27.1 more than the next-highest total, Bonds’ 54.3, and his 167 wRC+ trailed only Bonds’ 208, over more than double the plate appearances. On a rate-stat or prorated basis, Bonds did have more value during the period the two players overlapped, but beyond the video-game stats he put up from 2001 to -04, he didn’t have much value outside the batter’s box, producing just 7.1 WAR from 2005 to -07, his age-40 to -42 seasons.

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Last week, the bell tolled for the 2018 season of the Diamondbacks’ Taijuan Walker. The week before that, it tolled for the Padres’ Dinelson Lamet, and before him, the Angels’ JC Ramirez and the A’s A.J. Puk. If it feels like March and April are particularly full of Tommy John surgery casualties, that’s because they are, at least when it comes to recent history. In early March, just after Rays righty Jose De Leon discovered that he had torn his ulnar collateral ligament, I noted some recent trends regarding everyone’s favorite (?) reconstructive elbow procedure, including the extent to which those early-season injuries are rather predictive of the season-long trend. With April now in the books, and with my nose still in Jon Roegele’s Tommy John Surgery Database, the situation is worth a closer look.

Via the data I published in the De Leon piece, just under 28% of all Tommy John surgeries done on major- or minor-league pitchers (not position players) from 2014-17 took place in March or April, with the figure varying only from 24.8 % to 30.0% in that span. Even expanding the scope to include February as well, which doesn’t increase the total number of surgeries by much but does capture significant ones such as that of Alex Reyes last year — gut punches that run counter to the optimism that reigns when pitchers and catchers report — the range is narrow, with 27.5% to 33.0% of pitcher surgeries taking place in that span.

After my piece was published, a reader pointed out that The Ringer’s Ben Lindbergh took an in-depth look at the phenomenon, but intuitively, it’s not hard to understand. Not only do pitchers’ activity levels ramp up dramatically once spring training begins, as they move from lighter offseason throwing programs to facing major-league hitters and therefore place far more stress on their arms, but many pitchers are finally forced to reckon with injuries that did not heal over the winter.

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The Dodgers’ 2018 season has already seen its share of insult and injury, but Monday brought the coup de grâce: Corey Seager will miss the remainder of the year due to Tommy John surgery on his right elbow. His loss means that the defending NL champions, who have limped through March and April with a 12-16 record, will never get a chance to field their best lineup, with Seager alongside third baseman Justin Turner, who’s been sidelined by a broken left wrist since March 19.

Seager has had elbow problems since late August of last season, when inflammation limited him to pinch-hitting duty during an 11-game span that was part of the team’s dreadful 1-16 tailspin. Though he said that the injury bothered him more while throwing than while batting, he struggled at the plate for the remainder of the season and into the postseason; his absence from the team’s NLCS roster was due to a back strain, not the elbow. In the wake of an MRI taken at the beginning of the offseason, TJ surgery wasn’t considered as an option, and Seager spent the winter working on rehabbing and strengthening the elbow. He didn’t play shortstop in a spring-training game until March 7.

Seager aggravated his elbow making a pair of relay throws in a loss to the Giants, and an MRI taken on Monday revealed “a much worse” injury than before. “There was no gray area as to what the right decision was,” he told reporters. Given the typical nine- to 12-month rehab period for a position player undergoing TJ, Seager might have missed the entire 2018 season anyway if his November MRI had been more conclusive.

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On the same night that top prospect Ronald Acuña made his made his major-league debut, a former Brave had his own memorable moment. In Wednesday night’s Rays-Orioles game at Camden Yards, in the bottom of the sixth inning, 33-year-old Rays lefty Jonny Venters made his first major-league appearance since October 5, 2012. He faced just one hitter, Chris Davis, and needed just four pitches to retire him on a routine grounder to shortstop, but in doing so he became the rare pitcher to return to the majors after a third Tommy John surgery.

Exactly how rare is in dispute, which I’ll examine in greater depth below, but first, let’s appreciate the man and his moment. A 30th-round draft-and-follow pick in 2003 out of a Florida high school, Venters was such an obscure prospect that his name was misspelled “Benters” on some draft lists according to John Sickels. He began his professional career in 2004, but by the end of 2005, when he was 20, he had already gone under the knife of Dr. James Andrews for his first Tommy John surgery. That cost him all of the 2006 season. Working primarily as a starter, he reached Double-A in late 2008 and Triple-A in 2009. Though he didn’t make the Braves the following spring, he was soon called up and debuted against the Rockies on April 17, 2010 with three shutout innings.

Able to Bring It with rare velocity for a southpaw (95.1 mph average according to Pitch Info), Venters proved effective against righties as well as lefties and quickly gained the trust of manager Bobby Cox; by June, he was working in high-leverage duty. In 79 appearances as a rookie, he threw 83 innings and struck out 93, finishing with an ERA of 1.93, a FIP of 2.69, and 1.5 WAR. The next year, he made an NL-high 85 appearances and turned in similarly strong numbers in 88 innings, making the All-Star team along the way. The heavy usage was a bit much for his elbow to take, however. By mid-2012, a season during which he made a comparatively meager 66 appearances, he was briefly sidelined by elbow impingement. He began the 2013 season on the disabled list due to lingering elbow pain and soon received a platelet-rich plasma injection to promote healing. On May 16, he underwent his second TJ surgery, also by Dr. Andrews. To that point, he owned a 2.23 ERA, 3.00 FIP, and 26.6% K rate in 229.2 major-league innings.

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The Ronald Acuña era has begun, and in impressive fashion. Called up by the Braves on Wednesday after his service clock had been sufficiently gamed, the 20-year-old five-tool phenom made his debut against the Reds in Cincinnati, showing off his speed and his aggressive approach at the plate. He sparked a game-tying rally with his first major-league hit, and the Braves ultimately snapped a two-game losing streak against the Reds with a 5-4 win.

Acuña, who turned 20 on December 18, spent 2017 rocketing up the organizational ladder and the prospect rankings, beginning the season at High-A Florida and finishing it at Triple-A Gwinnett, hitting a combined .325/.374/.522 with 21 homers and 44 steals along the way. After ranking anywhere from 31st to 67th on major prospect lists last year, he topped those of Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, and ESPN this spring, taking a back seat only to Shohei Ohtani on those of MLB.com and FanGraphs. Though he tore up the Grapefruit League this spring, either his hat was too crooked or his 2024 season too valuable for the Braves to attempt to start winning games with him in the lineup. General manager Alex Anthopoulos mumbled something about “the flow of the season,” millions of eyes rolled, and the team bought itself that extra year while Acuña started 2-for-19 at Triple-A Gwinnett.

The assumption with that move was that the Braves were just marking time in the fourth season of a rebuilding program that’s been far more dramatic than most, in terms of both highs (the stealing of 2015 overall No. 1 pick Dansby Swanson from the Diamondbacks, the 2017 opening of SunTrust Park) and lows (the mid-2016 firing of manager Fredi Gonzalez, the late-2017 resignation and subsequent lifetime ban of general manager John Coppolella for circumventing international signing rules). With Wednesday’s win, they’re now 13-10, their best start in five years and good for third place in a topsy-turvy NL East behind the Mets (15-7) and Phillies (15-8). That trio of teams finished a combined 70 games below .500 last year, but with the Nationals (11-14) starting slowly and the Marlins stripped nearly to the bone after a 77-85 finish that was somehow good for second place, the standings look a whole lot different.

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