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 at Houston | 20:10 ET
Wilson (128.0 IP, 103 xFIP-) vs. McHugh (127.0 IP, 100 xFIP-)
The entertainment value provided by a text or performance is typically a direct result of the stakes which face the characters in that same text/performance. For example: while profound in its own way, the portion of a bar mitzvah during which the young man chants his haftorah is typically an exercise in abject boredom. Here one finds a 13-year-old who, rather than awkwardly chanting Hebrew in front of his bubbe, would probably much rather be awkwardly doing something else. Were that same young man, however, to receive electric shocks of increasing intensity for every pronunciation error he made — this would facilitate much greater entertainment for those gathered. Would it be horrifying? Yes. But, as everything everywhere proves, horrifying and compelling are not mutually exclusive.

For the duration of this series, the Angels and Astros will resemble, in no small part, a young boy who, while becoming a man, is also becoming unconscious due to all the aforementioned electric shocks. The clubs are currently separated by a mere game atop the AL West and only a handful of playoff-odds percentage points. The consequences, if not tremendous, at least resemble something approaching tremendous.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston Radio.

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Episode 582
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 multiple implications of Kansas City’s deal for Johnny Cueto and the dollar-per-win value of pitchers at the deadline.

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 41 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
Atlanta at Baltimore | 19:05 ET
Wood (112.0 IP, 104 xFIP-) vs. Gausman (33.0 IP, 114 xFIP-)
Relative to some of baseball’s recent daily schedules, today doesn’t offer a particularly compelling collection of games, lacking a number of the clubs — such as Houston and Pittsburgh and Toronto, for example — currently featuring the least certainty with regard to their postseason futures (and thus eliciting the greatest urgency at present). This is perhaps the ideal sort of day on which to perform any number of tedious errands which have been neglected for too long: visiting the town offices, for example, in order to acquire a one-day burn permit — or, otherwise, procuring for one’s dog the bordetella vaccine, which protects canines against the influence of Italian culture and people.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Atlanta Radio.

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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
Washington at Pittsburgh | 13:35 ET
Ross (26.2 IP, 66 xFIP-) vs. Cole (124.2 IP, 79 xFIP-)
Owing to the author’s combo package of ungovernable sloth and wide-ranging incompetence, there’s no adjustment included in any of the NERD algorithms to account for those games in which a player is expected to pursue some manner of historical record. So, for example, Zack Greinke’s current streak of 43.2 consecutive scoreless innings is ignored by the figures one finds in the table below. Fortunately, the totalitarian dystopia within which one is forced by law to watch only the top-rated game as determined by the author — fortunately, that bleak hellscape exists only in the future. As such, the reader is permitted to observe Greinke’s start without recourse.

Were one interested in consuming a different game, however, this Washington-Pittsburgh contest would appear to offer no little aesthetic possibility. Both of the relevant clubs are currently in the very real midst of a postseason race. Moreover, one finds that Joe Ross and Gerrit Cole are scheduled to start — the latter having been excellent this season, like everyone expected; the former, also excellent, but in a way no one expected at all.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington Radio.

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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 New York NL | 19:10 ET
Undecided (N/A) vs. Harvey (118.1 IP, 92 xFIP-)
Reports indicate that this game might represent the major-league debut of right-handed Dodgers prospect Zach Lee. A first-round selection out of a Texas high school in 2010, Lee notably forewent an opportunity to play quarterback at LSU by signing with Los Angeles. As Kiley McDaniel notes, Lee’s arm speed has declined since turning professional, although he’s still managed to record an above-average strikeout- and walk-rate differential as a 23-year-old in Triple-A this year. Even without Lee, this game offers the opportunity to observe two clubs, in the Dodgers and Mets, both contending for division titles. It also offers the opportunity to observe Matt Harvey, who is human but not actually all-too-human.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

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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) not currently playing in the majors. Players appearing on any of McDaniel’s updated prospect lists 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
Washington at Pittsburgh | 19:05 ET
Scherzer (138.0 IP, 76 xFIP-) vs. Locke (103.1 IP, 103 xFIP-)
One finds, not infrequently — within the help-wanted section of his local daily — one finds calls from area employers for a sort of job applicant who possesses what is best described as an “attention to detail.” Indeed, as of Thursday night in America, no fewer than 51 of the classified ads in the Concord Monitor — i.e. the newspaper published most closely to the author’s birth home — no fewer than 51 ads featured that precise arrangement of words.

Of note with regard to the sort of jobs that require an “attention to detail” is that the present author has never, ever been offered one of them. Indeed, rather than detail, the author’s attention is turned much frequently in the direction of things like wine in a box, for example, or like internet comedy videos.

It was probably in the author’s haste to direct his attention towards those latter things that I neglected yesterday, while preparing to introduce a slight alteration to the NERD team-score algorithm, that I neglected to include the proper cell range in a VLOOKUP function which returned each club’s divisional-series playoff odds. As a result, a number of clubs were assessed playoff odds of 0%. As a result of that, their NERD scores were distorted badly.

What I’ve done in the meantime, then, is to correct the great cell-range debacle and to update the team scores duly. Here, by way of illustration, are all the clubs to receive a a NERD of 7 or greater either by the distorted version published yesterday or the corrected one today:

One notes that a number of the scores for American League clubs have increased by two or three points. Unsurprisingly, these were the same clubs accidentally omitted from the aforementioned cell range. What one notes beyond that is the substantial volume of energy invested by the author in this overwhelmingly unimportant endeavor — an endeavor monitored by only a handful of people, it should be said, each of whom is also probably marveling at the curious use of his or her finite time among the living. And yet, what one thirdly notes is that the alternatives aren’t manifestly better and that diverting oneself briefly from the spectre of mortality perhaps actually does represent a rational use of one’s resources.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington Radio.

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Episode 581
Jeff Sullivan is a senior editor at FanGraphs. He’s also the totally imperiled guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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 1 hr 15 min play time.)

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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 New York NL | 19:10 ET
Kershaw (131.0 IP, 52 xFIP-) vs. Colon (109.1 IP, 99 xFIP-)
One overlooked advantage to having invented a hastily constructed algorithm for estimating the likely aesthetic appeal of baseball games is that one is able to alter said algorithm at his or her own pleasure. Partly in response to comments such as the ones made energetically by concerned reader NotGettingIt yesterday and partly in response to the author’s own fallible intuition, what I’ve done today is to change which sort of playoff odds are utilized in the team NERD scores. Until now, I’ve used the divisional-series odds from the FanGraphs Projections Mode. Starting now, however, I’ll use the divisional-series odds from the Season-to-Date Stats Mode.

The former, because it accounts for the actual players on each respective roster, is probably the better tool for estimating each club’s actual chances of qualifying for the postseason. The advantage of the latter mode, however — for this endeavor, at least — is that it reflects how an actual human person experiences the playoff race. Consider: the Giants currently trail the Dodgers by 2.5 games in the NL West. Because the latter club features a stronger roster than the former, their Projections Mode divisional-series odds are much better: 91.1% for the Dodgers versus just 25.6% for the Giants. What a human observes, though, is mostly just that 2.5-game lead — and a 2.5-game lead, generically speaking, doesn’t translate to such robust odds as those possessed by the Dodgers. The Season-to-Date Mode depicts more closely that generic translation: it gives the Dodgers a 70.5% chance of qualifying for the divisional series; the Giants, a 46.8% chance. In the former case, the two teams are separated by roughly 65 percentage points; in the latter, roughly just 25 points. While, again, the Dodgers probably possess something closer to 90% odds of qualifying for the divisional series, that figure is based on certain (sound) assumptions about the quality of their roster — assumptions with which a person, actually experiencing the event, is likely less concerned.

Below are now the top-five clubs by NERD. Note: pDOFF represents divisional-series playoff odds as calculted by means of the projections; sDOFF denotes the same thing, except as calculated by season-to-date stats. Team NERD formerly included the former; now, the latter.

Given their greater proximity to the 50% DOFF mark by this new methodology, both the Dodgers and Giants’ NERD scores increase — which also has the effect of displacing the Astros to some degree, although Houston’s score remains high overall.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

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