Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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
Boston at Toronto | 19:07 ET
Porcello (186.2 IP, 92 xFIP-) vs. Estrada (49.1 IP, 107 xFIP-)
If one is inclined to choose a game, even a game in September, for the quality of the pitching matchup it offers, then tonight’s encounter between Clayton Kershaw and Jose Fernandez is very clearly the crème of that particular crème — and, as any number of billboards along rural state highways in this country are inclined to remind the public, this is a free country. In the event, however, that one is more inclined towards the sort of conflict which is the staple of narrative structure, then the conflict created by the Blue Jays’ and Red Sox’ nearly equal and definitely opposite designs on the AL East title offers a strong example of that sort of pleasure, as well.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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 Cleveland | 12:10 ET
Paulino (MLB Debut) vs. Bauer (160.1 IP, 99 xFIP-)
In addition to whatever postseason implications this game possesses for either team — and it’s not without consequence for either club — it also offers the debut of giant David Paulino for Houston. The 6-foot-7 right-hander has both (a) produced excellent statistical indicators and (b) exhibited excellent arm speed as a professional. In 90.0 innings across multiple levels this year, Paulino jas recorded strikeout and walk rates of 29.4% and 5.3%, respectively — giving Paulino the fourth-best such strikeout- and walk-rate differential (behind Jose De Leon, Luke Weaver, and a Low-A prospect) among all minor-league starters who’d recorded at least 75 innings. As for the fastball, it sits around 94 mph according to most reports.

What Paulino hasn’t done is pitch much. After easing back from a Tommy John procedure last year, he missed time this year to a combination of team suspension and elbow discomfort. Do his breaking pitches feature adequate swing and miss? Will he throw even one changeup? This game will provide hot, hot data to the end of answering those questions.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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 AL at Oakland | 15:35 ET
Meyer (3.2 IP, 140 xFIP-) vs. Cotton (MLB Debut)
The author of this post recognizes that a game featuring two non-contending teams on the same day that, for example, talented pitcher Marcus Stroman is scheduled to start for the wildly competitive Blue Jays or, for example, talented pitcher David Price is scheduled to start for the wildly competitive Red Sox — that such a game probably isn’t Priority No. 1 for the public. Not unlike that light which knocked Paul to the ground, however, as he traveled to Damascus, right-handed Jharel Cotton is going to knock people to the ground as they travel to Damascus this afternoon. After that, he’s going to record his major-league debut for Oakland.

A fixture among the Fringe Five last year and this one, Cotton is a native of the Virgin Islands. Selected out of East Carolina University by the Dodgers in the 20th round of the 2012 draft, Cotton has produced elite strikeout and walk numbers throughout almost the entirety of his career in affiliated baseball. Part of the trade the sent Rich Hill and Josh Reddick to the Dodgers, Cotton has continued to produce elite strikeout and walk numbers as a member of the A’s system. With a fastball that sits 92-94, is how he does it. And with a plus-plus changeup.

Which, here’s an example of that changeup from spring training:

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Oakland Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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 AL | 19:05 ET
Sanchez (162.1 IP, 84 xFIP-) vs. Cessa (36.2 IP, 109 xFIP-)For much the same reason these same two teams were featured yesterday, they appear here again — largely owing, that is, to the considerable consequences of each of Toronto’s games right now. The author has expressed this previously in terms of the club’s probability of winning their division (51%) or qualifying for a wild-card spot (37%) or doing neither. At his site, The Baseball Gauge, Dan Hirsch provides another means by which to understand the same concept — namely, by championship leverage index (CLI). Just as leverage index measure the import of a particular moment in a game (where 1.0 is average and greater than 1.0 equals greater import), CLI measures the import of a game relative to a club’s chances of winning the World Series. The Blue Jays currently possess the league’s highest mark by this measure, a 2.31. Boston is second (2.28). And even Toronto’s opponent tonight, the Yankees, feature a slightly above-average figure (1.04).

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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 AL | 20:10 ET
Dickey (160.1 IP, 112 xFIP-) vs. Tanaka (173.0 IP, 82 xFIP-)
By whatever method one uses to determine such a thing, the result seems largely the same: the Toronto Blue Jays possess roughly a 50% probability of winning the AL East and something slightly less than that of qualifying for an AL wild-card spot and something less than either of those first two figures of failing to reach the postseason in any form, at all. But even that last figure is probably greater than 10% — which, events that are 10% likely to occur, they occur with some frequency. Like that someone would write these banal words, for example. And like that someone would consent to read them.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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 Diego at Los Angeles NL | 16:10 ET
Friedrich (100.1 IP, 120 xFIP-) vs. De Leon (MLB Debut)
The author has abused his role as the custodian of this daily post to assign — at his awful discretion — a NERD score of 15 to Dodgers pitcher Jose De Leon, thus rendering the game score one of the day’s highest. The reason: today’s start represents De Leon’s first as a major leaguer. And also the reason: basically no minor-league pitcher has matched De Leon’s success over the past few years. Consider, by way of example: at no point since Rookie ball in 2013 has De Leon recorded a strikeout rate below 30%, even while working almost exclusively as a starter. Nor does the success appear to be a product of mere deception or polish. Basically all public accounts report that the right-hander’s fastball sits at 92-94 mph. By comparison, the average four-seam fastball velocity among major-league starters this year has been 92.0 mph.

Here is not De Leon’s fastball, but rather his changeup, earning a swing and miss from Jake Lamb during spring training:

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles NL Television.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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 Chicago NL | 14:20 ET
Bumgarner (187.2 IP, 86 xFIP-) vs. Arrieta (168.0 IP, 89 xFIP-)
The present author repeats this sentiment below in a tortuous explanation of NERD’s playoff adjustment, but it merits some brief consideration here, as well: per FanGraphs’ playoff odds, the Cubs have now recorded more wins than the Central division’s next-best club, St. Louis, is projected to record by the end of the season.

Regard that same sentiment, in lightly photoshopped form:

What this means is that, as of now, it would be possible for the Cubs to lose all the rest of their games and still likely win the Central division.

As for their opponent today, San Francisco, they currently occupy a very different place: where the Cubs’ near future is more or less settled, the Giants’ is opaque. Whatever methodology one references, the Giants feature roughly an equal chance of winning the division as merely qualifying for a wild-card spot as doing neither.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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
Stroman (167.0 IP, 78 xFIP-) vs. Cobb (Season Debut)
Last year, Toronto starting pitchers combined to produce a collective 10.9 WAR. This year, with roughly a month remaining in the season, they’ve already surpassed that mark, having recorded 12.3 WAR as a group entering play today. Naturally, Aaron Sanchez (3.7 WAR) and J.A. Happ (2.7 WAR) have been central to that effort — and have produced numbers roughly equivalent to Stroman’s own 3.0 mark. Normalize for the vagaries of home-run allowance, however, and Stroman not only represents the best pitcher on his own club, but the third-best starter among all major-league qualifiers. Translating that to run-prevention would benefit the Blue Jays greatly, which club currently faces among the least certain postseason scenarios in the majors.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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 Chicago NL | 20:05 ET
Samardzija (166.2 IP, 102 xFIP-) vs. Montgomery (79.2 IP, 85 xFIP-)
Without wasting even a moment on something as pedestrian as “research,” the author of this post is prepared to state that today’s schedule features the fewest games of any specific day so far this season, with the exception of those which precede and follow the All-Star game. Nevertheless, that schedule also features the San Francisco Giants, a club whose games are of greater consequence right now than basically every other team’s. Per the coin-flip methodology that appears at this site, the Giants currently possess a 36% probability of winning the division and 46% probability of qualifying for the wild-card game — which leaves just under a 20% chance that neither of those events will occur. Wild uncertainty, is how one might characterize their predicament.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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 Baltimore | 19:05 ET
Sanchez (156.1 IP, 82 xFIP-) vs. Gallardo (91.2 IP, 130 xFIP-)
This seems like the sort of television for which one might be required to make an appointment: an unexpected and legitimate Cy Young candidate starts for a club that possesses the slimmest of leads over not one, but two, division rivals. One of those two division rivals is the opponent. Starring Aaron Sanchez and all the rules governing baseball.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio or Baltimore Television.

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