Tampa Bay Rays left-hander Matt Moore improved to 7-0 on Tuesday night as he pitched his team to a win over the Boston Red Sox.

Moore has a 2.44 ERA and has a .172 batting average against him.

"Matt's been wonderful, and again, he's going to keep getting better," Joe Maddon said. "There's more within Moore."

Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw threw a career-high 132 pitches on Tuesday night.

He pitched 8 2/3 innings against the Washington Nationals, allowing no runs and striking out 11 batters. It's only the fourth time in his career that Kershaw has topped 120 pitches.

Kershaw threw more than 18 pitches in only one inning -- 29 in the first.

David Ortiz says a sore oblique muscle, not a controversial story in the Boston Globe, sent him into a slump last week.

Ortiz has been dealing with tightness in his left oblique muscle since he hurt it swinging the bat in Texas on the first weekend of May. Ortiz entered Tuesday night's game with just one hit in his previous 20 at-bats, but hit a three-run home run in the first inning.

"I'm going to keep on playing," he said. "It's not at the point where it's getting worse. Hopefully it won't get any worse. It bothers me on some swings that I take. Last week I was watching some videos of outside pitches I was kind of pulling. When you get to the point where you want to drive the ball the other way and the next thing you know, you're hooking the ball, that's not normal."

Ortiz said that a Boston Globe column suggesting he was suspected of using steroids had not distracted him into a slump. "Not really," he said, though he has expressed anger at columnist Dan Shaughnessy.

The St. Louis Cardinals let Kyle Lohse leave as a free agent and then Chris Carpenter essentially retired this winter, but they still entered the season with a deep staff.

The Cardinals' five starters -- Adam Wainwright, Jaime Garcia, Lance Lynn, Jake Westbrook and Shelby Miller -- have a 2.20 ERA, leading the majors through Friday.

"Going into the offseason, we felt like we had eight starters for five spots," general manager John Mozeliak said. "Carp went down, but we still felt like we had depth, and that's why we didn't feel an obligation to chase free agents."

According to ESPN Stats & Info, there have been 102 division champions since 1996 and 51 percent (53 clubs) were in first place on May 1.

Last season, only the Washington Nationals were leading on May 1 and went on to win their division.

In fact, since 2009 only eight of 24 eventual division winners were leading on May 1.