Daily Notes: An Ideal Occasion for Enjoying Felix Hernandez

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

1. Featured Game: Seattle at Pittsburgh, 12:35 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Seattle at Pittsburgh, 12:35 ET
Regarding This Game, One of Its Virtues
One of the virtues of this game is how, in Felix Hernandez (50.2 IP, 65 xFIP-, 1.6 WAR) and A.J. Burnett (42.0 IP, 68 xFIP-, 1.2 WAR), it features two of the major leagues’ strongest pitchers.

Regarding This Game, Another of Its Virtues
Another of this game’s virtues is how, owing to Pittsburgh’s excellent center-field camera, it will facilitate a much better angle for watching Felix Hernandez than the right-hander’s home stadium and camera do.

By Way of Example, Harang at Safeco
By way of example, here’s a screenshot from the first inning of Aaron Harang’s May 1st start against Baltimore at Safeco:

By Way of Example, Harang at PNC
By continued way of example, here’s another screenshot — in this case, from the first inning of Harang’s start yesterday (Tuesday) in Pittsburgh:

Regarding the Camera Angles, Their Relevance to Hernandez
The straight-on camera is particularly well-suited for watching Hernandez, who throws an excellent changeup — the considerable armside movement of which pitch is muted by an off-center outfield camera.

Correction
In the previous entry, the author referred to Felix Hernandez’s changeup as excellent, when what he actually meant was that it’s capable of invoking religious experience.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast
Per the results of our crowdsourcing project from the 2011-2012 offseason, FanGraphs readers prefer Seattle Radio (link).

Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
Miami at San Diego | 15:40 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
With regard to this game, the author is reminded of a pearl of wisdom courtesy his own mother. “Carson,” she said, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, you are going to love participating in internet comment threads” — this, in fact, years before the internet was available for easy home use.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Diego Television.

Detroit at Washington | 19:05 ET
This was yesterday’s featured game. Due to rain, however, it is also a game today, as well.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington Radio.

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 5.1.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Mike Minor	ATL	6	8	5	4	4	CIN	Mike Leake	12:35
Felix Hernandez	SEA	10	4	9	8	9	PIT	A.J. Burnett	12:35
Jake Westbrook	STL	1	2	3	4	5	CHN	Carlos Villanueva	14:20
Ricky Nolasco	MIA	2	0	1	4	0	SD	Jason Marquis	15:40
Jon. Pettibone*	PHI	7	2	4	5	2	SF	Barry Zito	15:45
Anibal Sanchez	DET	10	7	8	3	7	WAS	Jor. Zimmermann	19:05
Luis Mendoza*	KC	3	6	4	7	3	BAL	Chris Tillman	19:05
A.J. Griffin	OAK	4	7	6	10	5	CLE	Justin Masterson	19:05
Jake Peavy	CHA	9	0	5	7	2	NYN	Jeremy Hefner	19:10
Pedro Hernandez*	MIN	3	3	6	9	9	BOS	Allen Webster*	19:10
Ricky Romero*	TOR	4	5	5	7	5	TB	Matt Moore	19:10
Joe Blanton	LAA	2	4	3	5	3	HOU	Bud Norris	20:10
Derek Holland	TEX	9	3	7	6	6	MIL	Kyle Lohse	20:10
David Phelps*	NYA	6	6	5	7	3	COL	Juan Nicasio	20:40
Wade Miley	AZ	4	5	6	3	9	LAN	Clayton Kershaw	22:10

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.