In Tuesday night's Blue Jays-Rays game, Toronto starting pitcher JA Happ was hit in the side of the head by a line drive off the bat of Rays outfielder Desmond Jennings. Happ was taken off the field on a stretcher with his head immobilized, and he offered the crowd a wave of his hand as he left the field.

Video of the incident is below the jump, but I must warn you that it's graphic.

Closer controversies can full of intrigue, like the Reds' decision to return Aroldis Chapman to closing duties. They can also be stupid and kind of sad, like the mess at the end of the Milwaukee bullpen right now. And then there are closer controversies that are just the worst, which is in the case in Boston.

As the owners of the best record in baseball, the Red Sox don't have a lot of problems, but their closer position is a problem and it is a doozy. Ironically, the Boston front office has gone out of the way to try and make their closer situation a strength but instead it has ended up becoming both a weakness and a constant concern.

Before 2012, they traded for Andrew Bailey who is an All-Star when healthy. Well, he wasn't healthy and barely pitched for the Red Sox at all in 2012. Recognizing the error of their ways, the Sox once again took to the trade market and acquired an All-Star closer in the form of Joel Hanrahan. Hanrahan was seen as a hedge against Bailey as Hanrahan had no real history of health problems. He did however have some alarming indicators in his peripheral stats, like a spike in walk rate, home runs allowed and FIP, that suggested Hanrahan might be in for a decline in production. You'll never guess what happened next.

Timing is everything in life. No team in baseball knows that better than the Texas Rangers who are off to a 20-12 start, giving them the second-best record in the American League. Considering their success in recent years, there is no doubt that the Rangers are good, but are they really as good as their record suggests or are they just the beneficiaries of some really good timing?

At worst, Texas is just a big bunch of bullies. Through the first 32 games of the season, they have played all of three games against a team that currently boasts a winning record; that would be a sweep of the Boston Red Sox, who have the best record in baseball. The rest of the time they have been roughing up known cellar dwellers like the Cubs, Mariners, Twins and Astros as well as a trio of early season disappointments in the Angels, Rays and, to a lesser degree, the White Sox. That all adds up to the Rangers having the third easiest strength of schedule played thus far this year.

This is not their fault, obviously, so we certainly shouldn't look down on Texas for doing what good teams do and pummeling inferior competition. What we can do is wonder if their cream puff schedule might not be masking some real weaknesses on the Texas roster. Most notably, their rotation, which looks terrific right now but could actually just be benefiting from playing against a slate of lineups that range from truly miserable to average at best, save for the Red Sox.

For the Philadelphia Phillies to compete in the NL East with the Washington Nationals and Atlanta Braves, the general presumption was that starting pitching would have to shoulder the burden. 

Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels — arguably the best starting top three in MLB — would have to pitch at their best for the Phillies to contend. That became an even greater responsibility when general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. failed to add an impact hitter to the team's everyday lineup. 

But now that Halladay is on the disabled list with a shoulder injury (please pardon that pun in the first paragraph), where does that leave the Phillies' chances this season? 

Halladay was placed on the 15-day disabled list with shoulder inflammation. But the fear is that this could be a longer-term injury for the right-hander, who will turn 36 years old next week. As my colleague Jaymes Langrehr detailed in an earlier post, Halladay has been demonstrating signs of concern for at least the past year. 

Walk in to any AA game in the country and you’re going to find some guy out there playing who is as old as one of his managers, and you wonder what makes these guys hang on. How many years of bus trips can one man take? How many times can you ice your arm knowing that in five days you’ll be pitching to a bunch of kids five to ten years younger than you in some stadium where half the people are only there because it’s dollar dog night?

But these guys are out there. And there are a bunch of them. So it always warms my heart to tune in to some random major league game and see a decidedly nervous 29-year-old throwing his first big league pitches in what is likely to be a 3-week MLB career. But the fact that they’re there also makes it infinitely more understandable why so many guys hang on, even when they're shuffling levels and parent clubs, sometimes annually.

With that in mind, here are the five oldest rookies to break in this year.

Editors note: This does not include Kyuji Fujikawa (Cubs), who played professionally in Japan from 1999-2012. Honestly, I was tempted to include him, primarily so I could mention that as a rookie in 1999 he had to miss part of Spring Training while he was taking remedial classes in high school.

Atlanta Braves catcher Brian McCann made his return last night in Cincinnati. He went 0/4 with a walk in his first game back with the club, but looked much leaner and also was lacking his trademark bushy beard. The Braves new folk hero behind the plate, Evan Gattis, played left for Atlanta and strugged defensively, but ended up going 1/4 at the plate with an RBI double. Atlanta won the game 7-4, and it'll be interesting to see what ends up happening in the future for the Braves offense, especially when Jason Heyward returns.

PIC OF THE DAY

This Reds fan has the right idea. (Frank Victores-USA TODAY Sports) 

Game of the Night: Blue Jays 8, Rays 7. With two great games last night, I flipped a coin, and this game ended up on top. The Rays started the game off with seven straight runs in the first three innings off of Mark Buehrle, and it looked like it would be another long night for Toronto. However, Buehrle calmed down over his final three innings of his start, allowing only one baserunner in those three innings. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays offense began to fight back. In the fourth, Colby Rasmus hit a two-run homer to make it 7-2, and Melky Cabrera followed with an RBI single to cut the deficit to four runs. Jeremy Hellickson was chased after five, and in the sixth inning, Toronto added two more of of Jake McGee on a two-run homer by Mark DeRosa. All of a sudden, it was a 7-5 game. In the eighth, Jose Bautista cut the lead to a run after a sac fly off of Fernando Rodney. Looking for the five out save, Rodney was out of gas in the ninth, and allowed a go-ahead two-run homer to JP Arencibia to put Toronto in front 8-7. The untouchable Casey Janssen wasn't even looked at improperly in the ninth, and the Blue Jays picked up a big win that could be a season changer.

The Tommy John carousel keeps turning, and today's rider is Gavin Floyd of the Chicago White Sox. In addition to the Tommy John surgery to repair his UCL, Floyd will also have surgery to repair a torn flexor tendon in his right elbow. Not only will Floyd be out for the rest of this season, but with a 14 to 19 month expected recovery process, Floyd may also not pitch next season at all.

The timing isn't great for Floyd, as he'll be a free agent after this season. The Sox picked up a $9.5 million option on Floyd after last season after initially paying him $15.5 million over four years on a contract he signed prior to the 2009 season. The rest of that $9.5 million will be a sunk cost for Chicago this year after Floyd only made five starts in 2013, posting a 5.18 ERA in 24 1/3 innings. He hasn't pitched since two Saturdays ago, when he lasted just 2 2/3 innings against the Rays.

Roy Halladay has been a topic of conversation (and concern) for the Phillies since spring training. Now, the soon-to-be 36-year-old has landed on the disabled list with an unspecificed right shoulder injury.

After a rocky start to the season -- 12 earned runs in a combined 7.1 innings in his first two starts -- Halladay rebounded to put together a strong three-start stretch in mid-April that saw him allow just four runs in 21 innings. Unfortunately for Halladay and the Phillies, it was apparently after that third solid start that he started having discomfort in the same shoulder that gave him issues in 2012. He was crushed in his next two starts against the Indians and Marlins, surrendering 17 runs on 13 hits (including four home runs) in six combined innings.

The Phillies don't know (or aren't saying) what's wrong with Halladay yet, and he's slated to meet with Dr. Lewis Yocum sometime this week. It was easy to see that something was off with Halladay from the start, though. His velocity has continued its trend downward from his Cy Young-winning 2010 season: he's lost nearly 3 miles per hour on his two-seam/sinker (92.5 to 89.7) and cut (91.1 to 88.6) fastballs. If you go by PITCHf/x pitch values, that cutter was his best pitch in 2010 (1.56 runs above average per 100 pitches). This year, it's been his worst (4.63 runs below average). If you look at WAR, Halladay's been below replacement level in both the Baseball-Reference (-1.1) and FanGraphs (-0.5) measures.

All of the problems this year follow a pedestrian 2012 season that was hampered by the shoulder issue. Even before the discomfort this season, he wasn't performing to the standards we've become used to. The two injuries may not be related, but even so, that shoulder has been through a lot of innings -- 2721.2 to be exact, third-most among active pitchers, and just three innings behind Tim Hudson. It's entirely possible the workhorse is starting to break down.

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Yu Darvish is having an unreal sophomore season for the Rangers. In seven starts and 45 2/3 innings, Darvish has a 2.56 ERA, accrued 1.9 fWAR, and has struck out a league-leading 72 hitters. To put in perspective how vast the 15 strikeout difference between Darvish and second-place AJ Burnett is, consider the fact that Burnett could throw a nine inning complete game at his current K/9 ratio (which is 12.21), and still trail Darvish. A friend posed an interesting question on Twitter about Darvish: could he strike out 300 hitters this season?

While it seems easy to imagine Darvish striking out 300 hitters, you need a bit of historical perspective. The last pitched not named "Johnson", "Martinez", or "Schilling" to strike out as many as 270 hitters was Roger Clemens, who struck out 271 in 1998. Over the last 40 years, the only pitchers to strike out 300 hitters in a season were those three aforementioned starters, along with Nolan Ryan, Mike Scott, and JR Richard. 300 strikeouts seems like an easily attainable number because of how accustomed we were to Randy Johnson's dominance, but only three active pitchers have struck out 250 hitters in a season: Justin Verlander, CC Sabathia, and Tim Lincecum. 

To say that Phillies starter Roy Halladay had a rough game on Sunday might be an understatement. The Phillies fell 14-2 to the Marlins (Halladay's second straight start in a 14-2 loss), and the former Cy Young Award winner's line was hideous: 2 1/3 innings, four hits, nine runs, one home run, four walks, two hit batters, and four strikeouts. Put it all in a blender, and you get a cool game score of 13. After the game, Halladay admitted he has been dealing with shoulder soreness for his last two starts, and will be seeing Dr Lewis Yocum for an opinion on his shoulder. If this really is the beginning of the end, it's a sad way to go out.

PIC OF THE DAY

Shin-Soo Choo meets the wall. (David Banks-USA TODAY Sports)

Game of the Day: Royals 6, White Sox 5 (ten innings). Trailing 3-1 through six, the White Sox couldn't touch Kansas City starter Wade Davis. But Davis exited to begin the seventh, and Chicago struck against Royals reliever Tim Collins. Collins allowed a pair of singles and a double to make it a 3-3 game before he was relieved by Aaron Crow. Crow then let Alejandro de Aza to score on a wild pitch to put the Sox in front, and an Alex Rios homer extended their lead to two. But in the ninth with closer Addison Reed on the hill, Billy Butler hit a two-run double, bringing in Chris Getz and George Kottaras to tie the game. The teams went into extras, and Brian Omogrosso fell into a trap after allowing a leadoff single to Lorenzo Cain. With two outs and Cain on second, he intentionally walked Getz to put two on and two out for the slow of foot Kottaras. But then, Omogrosso walked Kottaras on five pitches, with the Kansas City catcher never moving his bat. Alex Gordon then smashed a walkoff single to give the Royals the win.