Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Cleveland at Chicago NL | 14:05 ET
Kluber (186.2 IP, 74 xFIP-) vs. Lester (148.1 IP, 81 xFIP-)
With hardly any pomp and even less circumstance, what the author has done for this edition of the daily NERD game scores is — instead of the season-to-date-stats playoff odds — is to use the coin-flip playoffs odds as the playoff-type input for the team NERD scores below. The logic behind the move: the coin-flip mode probably reflects more accurately how the human brain perceives the drama of the playoff race. The actual difference produced by the change: hardly any. In either case, the Cubs are among those clubs which feature divisional-series odds closest to 50% — which is to say, furthest from certainty. As of Sunday night, the probability of the Cubs reaching the divisional series, according to the season-to-date-stats model, was 44.8%; by the coin-flip model, 51.3%.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Chicago NL Television.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Los Angeles NL at Houston | 14:10 ET
Kershaw (169.0 IP, 56 xFIP-) vs. McCullers (76.2 IP, 89 xFIP-)
As contributor Neil Weinberg noted on Friday in these pages, left-hander Clayton Kershaw has an opportunity to produce baseball’s lowest expected fielding-independent pitching (xFIP) mark this season since 2002 — which is to say, also the earliest year for which the necessary inputs for that metric are available. While immaterial in itself, to set such a record would signify something more material — namely that, with regard to those variables over which a pitcher exacts the most control (and which are easiest measure), Kershaw has exacted terrifying and exceptional control. He is, one might say, a sort of despot, exerting a cruel power not over a tired and oppressed people but rather just the baseball strike zone.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston Television.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
San Francisco at Pittsburgh | 16:05 ET
Leake (143.0 IP, 97 xFIP-) vs. Cole (155.1 IP, 80 xFIP-)
The relative brevity of the passage you’re reading here is correlated inversely to the length of time the author spent last night consuming various spirits with readers of FanGraphs and also the magnitude of the physical discomfort which has been produced inside the author’s body as a result of that activity. In conclusion, faux science suggests once again that the Giants and Pirates ought to offer some combination of thrill and delight.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
San Francisco at Pittsburgh | 19:05 ET
Bumgarner (163.1 IP, 77 xFIP-) vs. Locke (129.1 IP, 104 xFIP-)
Writing about the implications of this series yesterday, the present author noted that, among all major-league clubs, the two considered here featured divisional-series playoff odds closest to 50% — which is to say, furthest from certainty. Not only does that remain the case today, but what else one finds is that, according to the numbers, this game itself is basically an exercise in uncertainty. Regard, by way of illustration, a lightly edited excerpt from today’s live scoreboard:

Afflicted by randomness, is how the Giants and Pirates currently find themselves. Afflicted by randomness, one notes, is also how any reasonably observant person describes his experience of the world. To suggest, then, that tonight’s contest represents a sort of morality play for existential angst — this would be accurate. Accurate but also overwrought. Overwrought, but not necessarily in an unpleasant way.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

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Note: San Diego prospect Travis Jankowski and Minnesota’s Max Kepler would both have likely been included within this edition of the Five, but are both ineligible — the former due to a promotion to the majors, the latter for having appeared among the top prospects on Kiley McDaniel’s recent in-season update.

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a couple years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion in the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above both (a) absent from the most current iteration of Kiley McDaniel’s top-200 prospect list and (b) absent from the midseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Keith Law, and John Sickels, and also (c) not currently playing in the majors. Players appearing anywhere of McDaniel’s updated prospect list or, otherwise, selected in the first round of the current season’s amateur draft will also be excluded from eligibility.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
San Francisco at Pittsburgh | 19:05 ET
Peavy (56.0 IP, 115 xFIP-) vs. Morton (88.2 IP, 100 xFIP-)
It’s a truth as old as Abe Vigoda: what the braying masses most want to observe is a pair of contestants, compelled by force or profit, to compete in a game with real consequences for both the winner and loser. What one finds in the Giants and Pirates is the baseball clubs whose wins and losses currently hold the greatest consequence. Regard, below: a table featuring the five teams whose odds of reaching the divisional series* are closest to 50% — which is to say, furthest from certainty. DIV% denotes current divisional-series odds; DIFF, the absolute value (in percentage points) from 50%.

The viewer is invited to examine the faces of each player for the presence of Shuddering Desperation — an expression which resembles the sort one might also wear after eating a burrito made with spoiled sour cream.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

*By the season-to-date stats method, which seems to best reflect how the human brain perceives the drama of playoff contention.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
New York NL at Baltimore | 19:05 ET
Syndergaard (105.2 IP, 81 xFIP-) vs. Jimenez (131.0 IP, 89 xFIP-)
There’s no way to measure it precisely, but it’s probably not entirely inaccurate to suggest that, among major-league fanbases, Mets’ supporters feature probably one of the greatest capacities for disappointment. Nor, it should be said, is their disappointment typically unwarranted. Indeed, despite benefiting from one of baseball’s largest markets, the club has qualified for the postseason only once since 2001. Whatever the sources of displeasure, however, rookie right-hander Noah Syndergaard is decidedly not among them. His combination of physical brilliance and actual performance conspires to produce a potent antidote to the club’s flagrant weakness.

With regard to whatever other trouble might afflict the Mets supporter, he or should ought to benefit from the wisdom contained in the following aphorism, care of Romanian pessimist Emil Cioran and found within in his text The Trouble with Being Born.

To be “happy” you must constantly bear in mind the miseries you have escaped. This would be a way for memory to redeem itself, since ordinarily it preserves only disasters, eager — and with what success! — to sabotage happiness.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

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Episode 588
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio, during which edition he discusses the collapse of the Washington Nationals, their (nevertheless) optimisitc rest-of-season projections, and the most effective efforts by front offices to share analytics with players.

This edition of the program is sponsored by Draft, the first truly mobile fantasy sports app. Compete directly against idiot host Carson Cistulli by clicking here.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 45 min play time.)

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
New York NL at Baltimore | 19:05 ET
deGrom (146.2 IP, 78 xFIP-) vs. Gausman (60.1 IP, 103 xFIP-)
Were the velocity aging curve for pitchers not merely a line on a graph but rather the topographic profile of a road in your local municipality, public-works officials would erect a sign at the beginning of it alerting motorists to the steep grade which lay ahead. Indeed, science reveals that pitchers lose, on average, about 0.3 mph per year of fastball velocity. What Mets right-hander Jacob deGrom has done instead, however, is to steadily gain fastball velocity since his major-league debut last May. After sitting at roughly 93.0 mph over his first handful of starts in 2014, deGrom has now produced an average fastball velocity of 95.0 mph or greater in 11 of his most recent 14 appearances. This open disregard for the natural limits of human anatomy is the precise sort of behavior which, were deGrom not a Dutch-American person but rather a character in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, would provoke the considerable anger of the Olympic gods — and the sort of robust vengeance of which those same gods are capable.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

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