DUNEDIN, Fla. -- Veteran starter Max Scherzer made his debut with the Toronto Blue Jays on Tuesday, but it was also his first appearance on the mound in Major League Baseball's automated ball-strike system era.

He's not a fan of it.

In fact, in a two-inning appearance in which Scherzer looked quite sharp against the St. Louis Cardinals, he came up on the short end of two robot challenges that turned strikes into balls.

"I'm a little skeptical on this," Scherzer told The Athletic after a performance in which he struck out four Cardinals in two innings. "I get what we're trying to do here, but I think major league umpires are really good. They're really good. So what are we actually changing here? We know there are going to be strikes that are changed to balls, and balls that are changed to strikes. ... So we're going to basically be even. So are we actually going to improve the game? Are the umpires really that bad? I don't think so."

The ABS system is being tested during major league spring training after years of experiments in the minors. It has been the topic of several postgame news conferences, and Tuesday was no different.

"Can we just play baseball?" Scherzer said. "We're humans. Can we just be judged by humans? Do we really need to disrupt the game? I think humans are defined by humans."

A three-time Cy Young Award winner, Scherzer, 40, has never been shy about expressing his opinion. And as he expressed some emotion on the mound as the calls were reversed, the tone of his news conference wasn't much of a surprise.

"I'm skeptical of it," Scherzer reiterated. "I get what we're trying to do, but I'm skeptical of what the results will actually be."

As far as his overall effort, the former ace was pleased. He finished with 34 pitches, including 20 strikes, as the Blue Jays posted a 3-2 win. Scherzer surrendered a leadoff triple to Victor Scott II starting the game but settled down, retiring his final six batters.

"I'm just trying to get sped up to game speed," Scherzer said. "You can throw as many bullpens as you want in the world, but that's not real. You need to get out there and face hitters. There's a game speed. I need to get back to game speed with mechanics, how everything works, where you want to deliver the ball and where you want to get the ball to -- at actual game speed. That's the ramp-up process of spring training.

"I'm not saying this is good, bad, this or that. No. This is about coming out, checking a box, executing, being healthy and getting out of here."

Scherzer also told MLB.com that this is exactly where he needs to be for a "normal" spring. And Blue Jays manager John Schneider, in his postgame media availability, concurred, telling reporters that Scherzer "felt great."

Scherzer was 2-4 with a 3.95 ERA last year for the Texas Rangers. He started the season on the injured list while recovering from lower back surgery and was on the IL from Aug. 2 to Sept. 13 because of shoulder fatigue. He didn't pitch after Sept. 14 because of a left hamstring strain. He signed a one-year, $15.5 million deal with Toronto earlier this month.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Inside the batting cages at the Boston Red Sox's spring training complex, where the future of hitting is playing out in real time, the best trio of position prospects in a generation blossomed.

Kristian Campbell, Roman Anthony and Marcelo Meyer have spent hundreds of hours in the building, rotating around its 10 tunnels, though their best work always seems to happen in Cage 4, right inside the main entrance. When they walk through the door, underneath a sign with a Ted Williams quote in big, capital letters -- "WE'RE GOING TO LEARN HOW TO DO TWO THINGS ... WE'RE GOING TO HIT IT HARD AND WE'RE GOING TO HIT IT IN THE AIR" -- they enter a hitting laboratory. Every cage is equipped with a HitTrax that gives them real-time batted-ball data. Trash cans house an array of training bats -- overweight and underweight, long and short, skinny. A Trajekt robot, capable of replicating every pitch thrown in the major leagues over the past half-decade, is joined by a dozen other standard pitching machines. Exit velocity leaderboards dot the walls.

Here, Campbell, Anthony and Mayer are in the middle of everything, appropriate for what their future holds. They're learning modern hitting philosophy, applying it in an array of competitions that aim to turn their tools into skills, jamming to Bachata and Reggaeton and rap and rock, talking immense amounts of trash. On a small desk inside Cage 4 sit two binders outlining the Red Sox's hitting philosophy: one in English and one in Spanish. These binders outline what the organization's hitting coaches refer to as its Core Four tenets: swing decisions, bat speed, bat-to-ball skill and ball flight.

As pitchers have leveraged baseball's sabermetric revolution into designer offerings and a sportwide velocity jump, hitting has fallen behind. Batting average and weighted on-base average (a metric that measures productivity at the plate) are at low points over the past half-century. Pitchers regularly flummox hitters. The Red Sox believe they can bridge the gap. And the new big three -- a nickname that was originally given to Mayer, Anthony and Kyle Teel, the catching prospect at the heart of the trade that brought ace Garrett Crochet to Boston over the winter -- are the philosophy's beta test.

"The training environment is the biggest thing with us," said Anthony, a 20-year-old outfielder. "We push each other so much, and it's always that competitive -- friendly, but competitive -- environment we set in the cage. We talk crap to each other. We really try to get the best out of each other and really beat each other in training. And I think it makes us better when we take the field."

There, their results are undeniable. Mayer, 22, is a smooth-fielding, left-handed-hitting shortstop who fell to the Red Sox with the No. 4 pick in the 2021 draft, weathered injuries and saw his exit velocity spike and strikeout rate dip last year. Anthony, who signed for a well-over-slot $2.5 million bonus after Boston chose him with the 79^th pick in the 2022 draft, is widely regarded as the best hitting prospect in the minor leagues. The 22-year-old Campbell, a fourth-round pick in 2023 as a draft-eligible redshirt freshman, was a revelation last season, the consensus Minor League Player of the Year who went from unheralded to a prospect coveted even more than Anthony by some teams despite an unorthodox swing.

All three will be in the major leagues sooner than later -- for Campbell, perhaps by Opening Day. They'll bring with them a shared experience they believe will transfer to the big leagues. When they eventually face Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, they'll have a sense of what to expect, not just because they stood in against him on the Trajekt but because coaches took his best fastballs (100 mph at the top of the zone), added an extra half-foot of rise to them and challenged the kids to hit it.

"You want to be surrounded with the best," Anthony said, "because it makes you want to become the best."

IN SEPTEMBER 2023, after the minor league season ended, the Red Sox gathered their minor league prospects at their spring training complex for a two-month offseason camp. Boston's staff assesses every hitter to form an action plan, and Campbell's was clear. He made excellent swing decisions and had elite bat-to-ball ability, both of which manifested themselves as he hit .376 with 29 walks and 17 strikeouts over 217 plate appearances in his lone season at Georgia Tech. While the 6-foot-3, 210-pound Campbell swung the bat hard, the Red Sox saw room for improvement. Ball flight represented the biggest area of need after his average launch angle during 22 postdraft pro games was just 2 degrees.

Inside the complex's cafeteria one day in camp, Campbell was surveying his options when Red Sox hitting coordinator John Soteropulos meandered by. Soteropulos had joined the team after three years as a hitting coach at Driveline Baseball, the Seattle-based think tank where philosophies have pervaded the game over the past decade. Soteropulos noticed shepherd's pie on the cafeteria's menu and alerted Campbell.

"You need to eat that," Soteropulos said. "It's got bat speed in it."

"I hope it has ball flight, too," Campbell said.

While Mayer entered the MLB ecosystem as a top prospect and Anthony a tooled-up could-be star, Campbell was different. Taken with the compensatory pick the Red Sox received when longtime shortstop Xander Bogaerts signed with the San Diego Padres, Campbell signed for less than $500,000. His swing was janky. He needed work. Soteropulos, director of hitting and fellow Driveline alum Jason Ochart and assistant farm director Chris Stasio were empowered by Red Sox management to implement their new systems in hopes of extracting the best version of later-round picks like Campbell -- and if it worked, he would represent the proof of concept.

From the moment he arrived in the organization, Campbell impressed the staff with his desire to learn. And challenging players beyond the perfunctory repetitions hitters take -- the same soft flips in the batting cage, the same 60 mph batting practice before every game -- is at the heart of Boston's philosophy.

Professional baseball players, the thinking goes, are elite problem solvers. Giving them complex problems drives them to adapt. If they train in environments that don't take them outside of their comfort zone, improvement is negligible. Challenging hitters, whether with the Trajekt or with machine balls that fly only when struck on the sweet spot or with slim bats that emphasize barrel control or hundreds of other ways, forces that adaptation. And it's those changes that take a nonexistent or atrophied skill and give it heft.

"I really wanted to go to a team that could develop me into a great player and that will take the time to help me because I feel like I'm really coachable and I listen," Campbell said. "I just need the right information. And if I don't know what I'm doing, it's hard for me to correct and change things."

Over those two months, the Red Sox didn't overhaul Campbell's swing as much as they found the best version of it. Thirty years ago, Coop DeRenne, a professor at the University of Hawaii, ran a study on overload and underload training that showed it significantly improved bat speed. The industry has mostly ignored its findings, but Driveline embraced them and brought them to the Red Sox. Campbell trained two days a week with bats that were 20% heavier and 20% lighter than standard 31-ounce bats. Though he whipped his bat through the zone with a preternatural ability to stay on plane -- the angle of the bat meeting the angle at which the pitch arrived at home plate -- delivering the barrel with greater force reinforced a tenet Red Sox coaches preach repeatedly: "The bats do the work for you."

The bigger challenge was adulterating Campbell's swing to hit the ball in the air. Williams, who wanted to be known as the greatest hitter who ever lived, long advocated for ball flight because he understood a hard-hit ground ball is typically a single while balls struck in the air produce the vast majority of extra-base hits. Pulling the ball in the air is particularly important. The longer a bat takes to make contact, the more speed it generates. Meeting a ball in front -- which typically allows a hitter to pull -- maximizes the capacity for damage.

Rather than overhaul Campbell's swing, the Red Sox preferred to let his natural athleticism guide him toward a solution. Instead of moving his hand position or getting rid of his toe-tap, Campbell altered where he wanted to strike the ball, reminding himself with every rep to do something counterintuitive: Swing under it.

"For me, it's just a feeling," Campbell said. "You got to know where your barrel is at all times. It was in an odd spot because I was trying to get more elevation on the ball than normal. So I feel like I have to swing under the ball to hit it in the air. And I really was on plane because I've been so on top of it all these years."

Campbell's barrel aptitude improved by taking reps with a fungo bat or a slim 37-inch bat (3 to 4 inches longer than the standard bat), which forced him to meet the ball farther in front of the plate. The skills learned in doing so eventually meld with a hitter's' regular bats, and variations of drills -- offsetting standard pitching machines to the side, mixed-pitch Trajekt sessions -- allow them to be applied in new, challenging environments. In the cages in Ft. Myers, coaches pitted Campbell and his fellow prospects against one another to see who could hit the ball hardest or most consistently. Winners gloated -- "Marcelo talks s--- 25/8," Anthony said -- and those who didn't win returned the next day intent on revenge.

When last winter's offseason sessions ended, the Red Sox were hopeful they would translate into a breakout season for Campbell. Even they could not have predicted what transpired over the ensuing months. Campbell said he came into 2024 hoping to hit five home runs -- one more than in his lone college season. He started the season at High-A Greenville and hit his fifth home run May 9. Less than a month later, with three more home runs on the ledger, he ascended to Double-A, where he spent two months and whacked eight more homers. He was promoted to Triple-A for the final month and added another four, finishing the season hitting .330/.439/.558 with 20 home runs, 24 stolen bases, 74 walks and 103 strikeouts in 517 plate appearances.

"I remember the first time I saw him hit, I was like, 'The hell is this?' " Mayer said. "He's in the cage with the weirdest swing I've ever seen, and he's got his long bat, and I'm like, 'What?' Next thing I know, he's hitting .380."

When Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story first saw Campbell on a rehabilitation assignment in Triple-A, he was taken by his ability "to self-organize and learn how to solve problems."

"He has a special talent for moving the bat," Story said. "His bat speed is just violent. When you hear it, you're like, oh, s---."

"It's controlled violence," Campbell said. "You got to make sure you see the ball. And then whenever you make a decision to swing, you got to put your fastest, hardest, best swing on it and make sure you stay somewhat under control while that ball is going on so you can hit the ball as well as possible.

"Every swing really can't be the same. The way pitches move and how good everybody is nowadays, if you take the same swing every time and only can hit certain pitches, that's a mistake. You've got to be able to adjust to different things, different pitches, different locations."

DURING THE FIRST week of this year's spring training, before the full Boston squad reported, Red Sox Hall of Famer Dwight Evans stood outside of Cage 4 and admired what he was seeing. Evans spent two seasons as a hitting coach, in 1994 with Colorado and 2002 with the Red Sox, and he recognizes baseball's evolution. The game changes, and even if all the technology isn't his cup of tea, he isn't going to argue with the results.

In Campbell, Mayer and Anthony, he doesn't see prospects. Without an at-bat to their names in MLB, they remind Evans -- who spent 20 seasons in the major leagues, 19 with Boston -- of his peers.

"It's almost like they've been around 10 years in the big leagues," Evans said. "They just have it. They know what they're trying to do."

The Red Sox believe this is just the beginning for Campbell, Mayer and Anthony and that their approach to hitting will create a pipeline of prospects to join a core that includes the trio alongside All-Stars Rafael Devers, Jarren Duran, Alex Bregman and Story, and the young and talented Triston Casas and Ceddanne Rafaela. Buy-in at all levels is paramount, and chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, assistant general manager Paul Toboni and farm director Brian Abraham are leaning into the work done by Ochart, Soteropulos and Stasio. Breslow hired Kyle Boddy, who founded Driveline, as a special adviser. Five other former Driveline employees dot the player development, baseball science and major league staffs, and Stasio was promoted over the winter to director of major league development, a new role in which he will apply the development philosophies to the big league club and maintain the continuity for prospects who ascend to Fenway Park.

Campbell is in line to be the first -- of many, the Red Sox hope -- to crack the big league roster. He's in competition for the second-base job this spring, a testament to the organization's belief in him. If he wins it, Bregman will play third and Devers -- who has received MVP votes five of the past six years and signed a franchise-record $313.5 million contract -- will move to designated hitter, a role he said unequivocally he doesn't want to play.

The Red Sox see Campbell as worth the potential drama. Perhaps it's a function of five playoff-free seasons in six years since their 2018 World Series title, but it's likely simpler: Campbell is too good to keep down. Mayer and Anthony won't be far behind. The competition fostered in Cage 4 -- and the work ethic it demands -- isn't going anywhere.

Even before Campbell's arrival, Mayer and Anthony had grown close through late-night, postgame hitting sessions. Both have beautiful left-handed swings, more traditional than Campbell's in which he waggles the bat, pointing it almost directly toward the sky at the swing's launch point. Starting from a better place than Campbell hasn't kept either from reaping the benefits of Boston's program.

"I don't know if I'm hitting the ball harder because it's necessarily bat speed or because I'm working in the gym, but both together could only help," Mayer said. "So over the years, I feel like I'm hitting it harder, I'm moving the bat quicker. I have a better understanding of my swing. So all those things tie in and play a big role and lead to success."

Knowing which prospects will find major league success is impossible, though in an era defined by objective data, the misses aren't nearly as frequent. There was no bat-speed data when Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas and Wil Myers were all top-10 prospects for Kansas City in 2010. Trajekt was a dream machine when Arizona had Justin Upton, Chris Young and Carlos Gonzalez in 2007. Exit velocity was the domain of rocket ships in 2004 when Rickie Weeks, Prince Fielder and J.J. Hardy were coming through the Milwaukee system.

It's a whole new baseball world, and it is on full display in Cage 4, where Campbell, Mayer and Anthony have spent so much time working with their instructors that they joke that Soteropulos might as well sleep there.

"It's pretty cool to think about how many spring trainings we've been in there," Anthony said. "Looking back at it and being on the big league side, just appreciating guys like John and guys on the minor league side that take so much time out of their days to get us better."

For all the struggles hitters around baseball have faced, the Red Sox believe in their system -- and in this first generation that will serve as a litmus test to its efficacy.

"I'm committed to the game," Campbell said. "I want to be the best player I can be every day. I want to bring whatever I can to Boston. Once I knew they drafted me, I was like, 'That's the team I'm going to debut with. That's the team I'm going to play with. I want to play with the team for a long time.' I just knew that I'm going to give all I have to this team that took a chance on me. I'm going to make sure it's worth it for them and me."

WASHINGTON -- It took 57 games for the Washington Wizards to hold a team under 100 points this season.

Of course, Marcus Smart wasn't around for most of those.

Smart and the Wizards held Brooklyn to 12 points in the fourth quarter of their 107-99 victory over the Nets on Monday night. Washington was the only team in the NBA that hadn't kept an opponent in double digits this season, but the Wizards finally did it in Smart's second game with them.

"It took everybody," Smart said. "That Brooklyn team as we all know, they don't back down from nobody. They're going to come out and test you on both ends."

The 2022-23 Utah Jazz went the whole season without holding an opponent under 100, according to Sportradar. They were the first team that failed to hold a team under 100 since the 1990-91 Denver Nuggets. Denver also needed until game No. 74 to do it in 1986-87.

The Wizards acquired Smart from Memphis in a recent trade that moved him from one of the top teams in the Western Conference standings to the league-worst Wizards. He was the 2022 NBA Defensive Player of the Year with Boston, but he hasn't played much since being dealt to the Grizzlies in June 2023.

Smart has been dealing with an injury to his right index finger recently, but he made his debut for the Wizards last week and played again Monday. He scored 10 points in 21:38 against Brooklyn.

"There is some people that kind of probably slept -- I haven't played in a couple years consistently, and they probably forgot about me -- which is cool. I'm used to it," Smart said. "I still do what I do."

Brooklyn took a 97-96 lead on Trendon Watford's layup with 4:45 remaining. Then the Nets didn't score again until a couple of free throws with 13 seconds left.

Washington won despite 23 turnovers. Brooklyn committed 18 of its own.

"We weathered the storm," Wizards coach Brian Keefe said. "We didn't play a perfect game. We scored 40 points in the second half. We struggled to score at times. We're still learning chemistry with the new guys. But that didn't stop us from staying competitive and staying with the game. We really won the game tonight with our defense."

INDIANAPOLIS -- Nikola Jokic had a career-best 19 assists, while adding 18 points and nine rebounds, Aaron Gordon scored 25 points and the Denver Nuggets defeated the Indiana Pacers 125-116 on Monday night.

According to ESPN Research, Denver's win marked Jokic's 28th career game with at least 15 assists, the most by a non-guard in NBA history. His final total is also tied for second most in a game by any center in the league's history. Only Wilt Chamberlain, according to ESPN Research, has had more, posting 21 assists against the Detroit Pistons back in 1968.

"If you're a player that has no weakness, and there is not one (mark) in that armor, the guy is just an amazing, complete basketball player. And I think the most remarkable thing is not just 19 assists, but the satisfaction and joy that Nikola gets from making his teammates better," Denver coach Michael Malone said. "And he'd be happy getting 19 assists ... and us winning (more) than any other superstar that I've ever come across."

Denver used a balanced attack to bounce back after the Los Angeles Lakers ended the Nuggets' nine-game winning streak on Saturday, but make no mistake: Jokic was the star of the show.

"He's a humble person and understands that this whole thing is always much bigger than the individual," Malone said. "It's the collective. But 19? ... What is that? ... He's just an incredible player. And what a luxury to have when you can just play through him down the stretch of a close game and you know something good is going to happen each and every time."

Michael Porter Jr. had 19 points and 11 rebounds, Christian Braun added 17 points and Jamal Murray scored 16 for Denver.

Myles Turner led Indiana with 23 points. Tyrese Haliburton had 19 points and 15 assists, Pascal Siakam scored 19 points and Aaron Nesmith 17.

"Obviously, Nikola is not a guy in the league that you would say is an elite defender, but he's one of the highest IQ guys in the league," Haliburton said. "And I thought he did a great job in the pick and roll making me have to make different reads."

The Nuggets led by as many as 13 before settling for a 64-58 lead at halftime. The Pacers had trimmed the lead to 56-55 off a fast break dunk by Obi Toppin with 2:43 left in the second quarter. Denver followed with a 6-0 run to regain control.

The Nuggets shot 56% and held a 46-32 rebounding edge. Denver also made 8-of-21 3-pointers while the Pacers were 14 of 43 from 3-point range.

After the Pacers narrowed the deficit to 115-108, Gordon hit a 19-foot jumper and then Christian Braun scored on a layup from an alley-oop pass from Jokic.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Detroit Red Wings placed veteran center Andrew Copp on injured reserve Monday with an undisclosed injury, and the team has no timeline for his return.

In a corresponding move, the Red Wings recalled center Sheldon Dries from Grand Rapids of the American Hockey League.

Copp, 30, was injured in the second period of Detroit's 4-3 overtime loss to the Minnesota Wild on Saturday. Copp missed the Red Wings' 5-4 overtime win against the Anaheim Ducks on Sunday, and he will not travel with the team for Tuesday's game at the Wild.

"We will know a lot more [Tuesday]," coach Todd McLellan said Monday after practice, "but it looks like it might be longer than we anticipated."

Copp has 10 goals, 23 points, 8 penalty minutes and 35 blocks in 56 games this season.

The Winnipeg Jets selected Copp in the fourth round of the 2013 NHL draft. He has 114 goals, 186 assists, a plus-73 rating, 149 penalty minutes and 371 blocks in 700 regular-season games for the Jets (2014-2022), New York Rangers (2022) and Red Wings (2022-present).

Copp also has 9 goals, 26 points and 16 penalty minutes in 54 playoff games.

Dries, 30, last played in the NHL in the 2022-23 season for the Vancouver Canucks. He has 16 goals, 26 assists, 59 penalty minutes and 68 blocks in 122 games for the Colorado Avalanche (2018-21) and Canucks (2021-23).

Earlier in the day, Detroit sent veteran goaltender Ville Husso to the Ducks for future considerations. Husso had also been playing with Grand Rapids after being demoted earlier this season.

Information from Field Level Media was used in this report.

It has been another bad week for Manchester City. But after being knocked out of the Champions League by Real Madrid and symbolically dethroned as Premier League champions in a 2-0 home defeat to runaway leaders Liverpool, it could get even worse from here for Pep Guardiola's team.

Leaving aside the shadow of the hearing into the Premier League's 115 charges for breaching financial regulations -- a verdict is expected within the next month or so -- the weeks ahead look bleak for a team that last season became the first in English history to win four successive league titles.

City have lost 14 of their past 27 games in all competitions and eight of their past 17 in the Premier League. Their woeful form, which is unprecedented since Guardiola's arrival as coach in 2016, has now left the club facing a battle to qualify for next season's Champions League.

Wednesday's Premier League trip to Tottenham Hotspur has become meaningless in terms of City's title hopes. With Liverpool 20 points ahead at the top of the table, City are out of the running to claim a fifth straight championship. But it is crucial nonetheless in the context of saving City's season.

Even though the Premier League is almost certain to have five Champions League qualification spots for next season (with England in a dominant position at the top of UEFA's coefficient table) the safety net of the extra place will only offer the faintest of comfort to City in contrast to their worrying form. Sitting in fourth position in the Premier League heading into the midweek fixtures, City are only a point clear of sixth-place AFC Bournemouth and just four ahead of ninth-place Brighton & Hove Albion.

Over the past 10 Premier League games, City sit in sixth position in the form guide, with Bournemouth and Newcastle -- sixth and fifth respectively in the table -- ahead of them. In the past 15 games, City are ninth behind Chelsea, Aston Villa, Bournemouth and Newcastle United, so the threat to Guardiola's hopes of extending City's run of Champions League qualifications to a 14th straight season is clear.

City are beset by injuries -- Ballon d'Or winner Rodri might not play again this season, John Stones and Manuel Akanji are facing weeks on the sidelines and Erling Haaland's knee injury is causing concern -- and serial winners Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gündogan and Bernardo Silva are fading fast as players capable of making an impact.

So could City's season actually get worse to the extent that they miss out on qualifying for the Champions League? The reality is that they are now one of six clubs scrambling for two places, and recent performances offer little encouragement that Guardiola's squad have nothing to worry about.

The good news for City is that none of the teams below them are tearing it up. Newcastle have lost three of their past six Premier League games, including a 4-0 loss at City on Feb. 15, while Bournemouth's impressive run of four wins in five league games was surprisingly halted with a 1-0 home defeat to relegation-threatened Wolverhampton Wanderers over the weekend.

Chelsea have dropped to seventh following a nightmare run of two wins and five defeats in their past 10 league games, and Villa only ended a five-game Premier League winless streak with a 2-1 victory against Chelsea at Villa Park on Saturday. Brighton have the best form of the Champions League chasers, winning four of their past six league games, but their two defeats in that run were a shocking 1-0 loss at home to a then-struggling Everton and a 7-0 hammering at Forest. So of the six teams chasing the final two Champions League qualification spots, none can boast of being in unbeatable form, but the inconsistency is giving them all hope of a top-five finish.

City, at least, have the benefit of being in control of their own destiny because they occupy a Champions League spot. It's a simple equation for Guardiola and his players: Win more games than the teams below you, and it will be possible to salvage the bare minimum from this season. But that means beating a resurgent Spurs on Wednesday and then denting Brighton's hopes with another victory at the Etihad on March 15. City also have home games against Villa and Bournemouth in the weeks ahead.

By this stage of a typical City season under Guardiola, all of those games would be regarded as nothing short of formalities, with City surging to a series of wins on the way to another title.

But this isn't a typical season, and City have been dragged down into the ranks of also-rans, so nothing can be guaranteed -- not even a place in the Champions League.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Anthony Edwards blocked Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's go-ahead shot attempt, capping a 25-point second-half comeback as the Minnesota Timberwolves beat the top-ranked Oklahoma City Thunder 131-128 in overtime on Monday night.

Jaden McDaniels scored 27 points, Naz Reid had 22 points and 11 rebounds and Nickeil Alexander-Walker added 21 points for the Timberwolves. Edwards had 17 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists for Minnesota, which lost 130-123 to the Thunder on Sunday night.

Gilgeous-Alexander had 39 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists, but Edwards blocked him at the rim with 13.2 seconds remaining in overtime. Gilgeous-Alexander also missed a 3-pointer with 2.9 seconds left in the extra period that would have tied the game.

The Timberwolves were trailing by as much as 16 points in the final four minutes of the fourth quarter. They are just the second team in the play-by-play era (since 1997-98) to win after trailing by at least that much with that little time left in regulation, according to ESPN Research. The Bucks did it against the Raptors on Jan. 4, 2023 after trailing by 21 in the final four minutes.

Jalen Williams scored 27 points and Aaron Wiggins added 19 for the Thunder, who still lead the Western Conference at 46-11.

Thunder forward Chet Holmgren, who missed three months with a pelvic fracture before recently returning, rested. Center Isaiah Hartenstein left the game in the second quarter and did not return with what Thunder coach Mark Daigneault called a facial contusion.

Oklahoma City led 82-57 in the third quarter and was ahead 102-80 going to the fourth. But rookie reserve Terrence Shannon Jr. scored 11 of his 17 points in the period and the Timberwolves outscored the Thunder 41-19.

Minnesota's rally happened mostly without Edwards, who played less than four minutes in the fourth quarter. Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said Edwards' leg was bothering him in the fourth, which is why he was on the bench. But with the game back in reach late, Finch said he was told Edwards was good to return.

The Timberwolves also won without center Rudy Gobert, who was out with lower back spasms.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

NEW YORK -- Hit hard by injuries early in spring training, the New York Mets added some depth Monday night when they acquired outfielder Alexander Canario from the Chicago Cubs for cash.

Canario, who turns 25 in May, made his major league debut for the Cubs in September 2023. He is 12-for-42 (.286) with 2 homers, 8 RBIs and an .857 OPS in 21 career games over the past two seasons.

The right-handed hitter was designated for assignment last Thursday when Chicago signed veteran infielder Justin Turner. Canario came to the Cubs in the July 2021 trade that sent four-time All-Star Kris Bryant to the San Francisco Giants.

In a corresponding move Monday, the Mets placed infielder Nick Madrigal on the 60-day injured list with a broken left shoulder.

The 27-year-old Madrigal, who was competing for a bench spot, was injured in a spring training game Sunday.

On Monday, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza told reporters that Madrigal would be out "a long time."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.