The third no-hitter of the 2018 MLB season and the 299th in professional baseball history belongs to James Paxton of the Seattle Mariners. Over nine innings in Toronto, the big Canadian lefty struck out seven Blue Jays and needed just 99 pitches to finish the job, throwing as hard as 100 mph in his final frame. While it wasn’t as dominant an effort as his 16-strikeout outing last week, Paxton’s no-no perhaps best represents this current era of baseball—an all-or-nothing affair in which making contact has more or less vanished.
Consider that, entering Tuesday’s action, the league as a whole was hitting just .