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 AL at Houston | 20:10 ET
Warren (77.0 IP, 111 xFIP-) vs. Keuchel (107.1 IP, 77 xFIP-)
A flawed algorithm constructed by the author indicates that this game is today’s most compelling one for much the same reason that other recent games have been designated as those other days’ most compelling ones — namely, because of how it features the Houston Astros. As a club, Houston possesses the fourth-highest odds of qualifying for the divisional series among all major-league clubs — this, despite also possessing the league’s youngest collection of batters. Famously, American boxer Muhammad Ali announced at a press conference that he was young, handsome, fast, pretty, and couldn’t possibly be beat. At least one — but probably also fewer than all — of those descriptive elements apply to the current incarnation of the Astros.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston 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
Houston at Los Angeles AL | 15:35 ET
McCullers (40.1 IP, 81 xFIP-) vs. Shoemaker (72.2 IP, 100 xFIP-)
The haphazardly constructed algorithm used by the author to measure watchability indicates that today’s Astros-Angels game is of some interest in no small part due to the Houston ball club’s unusual combination of youth and strength. The Astros feature simultaneously the lowest average batter age and also the highest park-adjusted home-run rate among all major-league teams — greater than two standard deviations from the mean in each case. Of shortstop Carlos Correa, one might reasonably say that he possesses youth and strength. Of George Springer, one might say the same thing. With regard to Evan Gattis, meanwhile, one is inclined to make a different sort of observation — namely, that he resembles a 19th century longshoreman. A longshoreman not just with a troubled past, but also a troubled present.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston 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
Toronto at Tampa Bay | 19:10 ET
Dickey (89.0 IP, 120 xFIP-) vs. Archer (95.0 IP, 60 xFIP-)
If the numbers possess any manner of legitimacy, it would appear as though America ought to begin acquainting itself with a new fact — namely, that Tampa Bay right-hander Chris Archer is among all the major leagues’ top-five pitchers in terms of preventing runs. Only the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw, for example, has produced a better park-adjusted expected FIP (xFIP-) — and only three pitchers have recorded a better strikeout- and walk-rate differential.

Of course, this won’t be the case for very long. Provided Archer declines at a similar rate to other pitchers, he’s unlikely to continue exerting such considerable influence over opposing batters. Fortunately for both the viewer and Archer himself, the deleterious influence of time likely won’t be felt so acutely on Tuesday night.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto 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 Chicago NL | 20:05 ET
Kershaw (93.0 IP, 57 xFIP-) vs. Wada (29.1 IP, 94 xFIP-)
In his collection of aphorisms The Trouble with Being Born, the spiritually embattled and now also dead Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran writes “The more gifted a man is, the less progress he makes on the spiritual level. Talent is an obstacle to the inner life.” Granting, for a moment, the truth of Cioran’s utterance, one is compelled to reason that left-hander Clayton Kershaw lacks much in the way of said inner life — owing, that is, to the flagrancy of his talents. This season, for example, he’s produced thus far both the highest swinging-strike and also overall strikeout rate of his career. Also, somehow, his average fastball velocity remains largely identical to the figures he recorded over each of the past seven years — this, despite the fact that pitchers as a population tend to lose about 0.3 to 0.5 mph each year. Empty, is what he must be on the inside. Empty and hollow. Like a big human kettledrum.

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
Detroit at New York AL | 13:05 ET
Sanchez (91.0 IP, 95 xFIP-) vs. Tanaka (43.1 IP, 71 xFIP-)
Research by the Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham — summarized in the graph below — reveals that Google searches for the term “hangover cure” are most frequent on Sundays.

Insofar as today is Sunday, it follows that a certain percentage of this site’s readers are experiencing la gueule de bois. While this afternoon’s encounter between the Tigers and Yankees doesn’t represent an actual hangover cure, it ought to serve — more than any other of the day’s games, according to the haphazard methodology utilized by the author — as a reasonable means of passing the time.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Detroit 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
Pittsburgh at Washington | 16:05 ET
Liriano (82.2 IP, 68 xFIP-) vs. Scherzer (93.1 IP, 73 xFIP-)
In the Book of Luke, Jesus of Nazareth relates a parable about a traveler who’s beaten and robbed but then ultimately cared for by a passerby. It’s from this passage that we derive the term Good Samaritan, after the ethnicity of that compassionate citizen. What one extracts from the parable is a working definition of the word neighbor (or plésion, it seems, in the Greek). What else one learns, however, is that two other men had seen the beaten traveler and ignored him entirely. Asshole (or something like malakas in the Greek, it seems), is the word most immediately applicable their particular behavoir.

How’s this relevant to this afternoon’s encounter between the Pirates and Nationals? This is how: instead merely of noting that Francisco Liriano and Max Scherzer have both recorded strikeout rates among the top five by that measure in all the major leagues — instead merely of nothing that and perhaps inserting a link such as this one — what that same author has done, in a fit of neighborly love, is to create an illustrative table for the reader’s benefit and publish it here:

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
Pittsburgh at Washington | 19:05 ET
Burnett (85.2 IP, 85 xFIP-) vs. Ross (13.0 IP, 65 xFIP-)
There are a number of events on which a pitcher exerts zero influence. The tides, for example. Middle East relations. A wife who, for some reason, insists on preparing dishes with improbable quantities of cilantro despite the fact that it tastes to her spouse like the bitter tears of orphan children. In the face of all these, a pitcher is a helpless and wriggling creature. With regard to those areas over which a pitcher does possess some control, however, Washington right-hander Joe Ross has been nearly flawless over his first two career starts, producing a 12:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 13.0 innings while also inducing grounders on over 60% of batted balls against him. What one finds here today is that same Joe Ross scheduled to record his third start — in this case, against a Pittsburgh club whose odds of qualifying for the divisional series are approximately a 50-50 proposition.

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
Chicago NL at Cleveland | 19:10 ET
Hammel (80.0 IP, 82 xFIP-) vs. Salazar (68.2 IP, 70 xFIP-)
It’s a working theory of the author’s, substantiated less by empirical fact than by observation of his own dumb self, that the human mind isn’t particularly adept at integrating a pitcher’s newest, most relevant performances into its understanding of that same pitcher. With regard to this game, for example, an encounter between Jason Hammel and Danny Salazar clearly lacks the prestige of last night’s matchup between Madison Bumgarner and Felix Hernandez — because Hammel has produced mostly average seasons, for example, and Salazar, despite an arm composed wholly of dangerous and beautiful electric current, hasn’t produced a signature season yet. At this moment, however, all relevant information — strikeout rate and swinging-strike rate and velocity — all of it suggests that Hammel and Salazar are the equals of Bumgarner and Hernandez.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Chicago 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
Miami at New York AL | 19:05 ET
Urena (26.1 IP, 111 xFIP-) vs. Pineda (74.2 IP, 66 xFIP-)
Central to the watchability not merely of sport but of any “text” designed for a viewing public is a sense of urgency. Not for nothing is cinema — and also every episode of 1980s action-adventure series MacGyver — littered with time bombs which need to be diffused seconds before reaching zero. Nor is urgency the province of the action genre, exclusively: even a film like My Dinner with Andre, which merely documents the conversation of two men seated in a restaurant, requires that conversation to create a sense of anticipation that can be satisfied only by continuing to watch.

On June 17, the major-league season doesn’t yet offer any metaphorical time bombs on the verge of metaphorical detonation. The Yankees, however, currently offer the closest thing to that: according to the playoff odds available here, the club features (as of this morning) a 50.2% chance* of qualifying for the divisional series — or, roughly as undecided as possible. Whatever happens tonight against the Marlins, therefore, is likely to move their odds further from that halfway point — either towards qualification for or elimination from postseason play.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Miami Television.

*One notes that Pittsburgh actually features odds even closer to 50% precisely. Other variables conspire to render it less compelling, however, according to the haphazard methodology utilized by the author.

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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
Toronto at New York NL | 19:10 ET
Copeland (10.0 IP, 92 xFIP-) vs. Harvey (79.2 IP, 81 xFIP-)
Recent research by the author in advance of an August trip to Montreal reveals that a U.S. citizen is permitted to remain in Canada as a tourist without a visa for up to 180 days, or roughly six months. Six months, one notes, is also almost the precise length of the major-league baseball season. In theory, then, one could take up residence in Toronto for the duration of the Blue Jays’ entire season and then return to the States upon the completion of same. Why anyone would engage in such behavior isn’t immediately clear. That it’s permitted legally, however — provided the traveler possesses no criminal record — is manifestly true. Moreover, one having relocated to Toronto this past April would have had the opportunity, thus far, to observe more closely the top park-adjusted offense in the majors.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

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