Daily Notes: A Brief Review of Zack Wheeler’s Debut Start

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.

1. A Brief Review of Zack Wheeler’s Debut Start
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

A Brief Review of Zack Wheeler’s Debut Start
Introduction
Prized Mets right-handed prospect Zack Wheeler made his major-league debut on Tuesday. What follows is a brief review of same.

Wheeler’s Results
In terms of run prevention, Wheeler was excellent on Tuesday — insofar, that is, as he prevented every run over six complete innings. His defense-independent numbers were less impressive, owing largely to control issues which saw him throw just 55 of his 102 pitches (ca. 54%) for strikes. His complete line from Tuesday is as follows (box): 6.0, 26 TBF, 7 K, 5 BB, 4 GB on 14 batted-balls (28.6% GB), 0 HR, 4 H, 4.86 xFIP.

Wheeler’s Pitches
As the PITCHf/x chart below (featuring speed and horizontal movement) reveals, Wheeler threw four pitches on Tuesday — a fastball, a slider, a curve, and barely a changeup — the usage of which pitches adds up to 101% somehow:

Wheeler’s Fastball
Wheeler’s fastball was his most effective pitch against Atlanta. Of the 14 swinging strikes generated by Wheeler on Tuesday, 12 of those were by way of the fastball. Here’s one of them, to Brian McCann for a strikeout in the second inning:

Wheeler’s Slider
Wheeler’s other two swinging strikes were recorded by way of the slider. Here’s one of those — in this case, one with less than horizontal movement than one might expect — to Dan Uggla for a strikeout in the sixth inning:

Wheeler’s Curveball
Wheeler’s curveball wasn’t particularly helpful for him on Tuesday — or, at least not in terms of results. He threw just four of his 12 curves for strikes — three called and one fly ball for an out. Here’s one of those called strikes, from the same Dan Uggla at-bat as above:

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
San Diego at San Francisco | 15:45 ET
Eric Stults (90.2 IP, 107 xFIP-, 1.4 WAR) faces Madison Bumgarner (90.0 IP, 87 xFIP- 1.8 WAR). As noted in these pages recently by Jeff Sullivan, the San Diego offense and defense — but expressly not their pitching — has been quite excellent of late. The Padres, as a team, are presently a standard deviation above league average both in terms of baserunning runs and also defensive runs saved.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

Today’s Complete Schedule
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire. The average NERD Game Score for today is 4.9.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Hyun-Jin Ryu	LAN	7	2	5	4	4	NYA	Hiroki Kuroda	13:05
Chris Tillman	BAL	4	9	7	7	9	DET	Rick Porcello	13:08
Jose Fernandez	MIA	10	0	6	3	5	AZ	Trevor Cahill	15:40
Eric Stults	SD	4	9	6	6	7	SF	M. Bumgarner	15:45
Luis Mendoza	KC	2	4	5	7	7	CLE	Ju. Masterson	19:05
Chris Capuano	LAN	2	2	3	4	5	NYA	Phil Hughes	19:05
Gio Gonzalez	WAS	6	2	4	1	3	PHI	Kyle Kendrick	19:05
Juan Nicasio	COL	3	9	5	6	4	TOR	Mark Buehrle	19:07
Shaun Marcum	NYN	5	6	6	8	5	ATL	Kris Medlen	19:10
Jeff Locke	PIT	3	6	4	5	4	CIN	Bron. Arroyo	19:10
Jer. Hellickson	TB	5	9	6	8	4	BOS	Ry. Dempster	19:10
Tommy Milone	OAK	5	6	5	4	6	TEX	Justin Grimm	20:05
Chris Sale	CHA	10	1	5	3	2	MIN	Kevin Correia	20:10
Kyle Lohse	MIL	5	4	3	3	0	HOU	Erik Bedard	20:10
Edwin Jackson	CHN	6	5	4	3	1	STL	J. Westbrook	20:15
Joe Saunders	SEA	2	4	4	7	4	LAA	C.J. Wilson	22:05

To learn how Pitcher and Team NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
To learn how Game NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.