Daily Notes: Are You Familiar with Baseball?

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

1. Regarding How Baseball Returns Today
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Regarding How Baseball Returns Today
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post is to alert the reader to how baseball — a game beloved by such notable personages as Walt Whitman and one of the Wright brothers, most likely — to how baseball returns today from its frightening and strange midsummer hiatus.

What One Can Expect Today
What one can expect today is to be assaulted by the thousand miniature anxieties of which a life is composed.

What One Can Expect Today from Baseball, Specifically
Confining our scope merely to baseball, it appears as though what one can expect is:

• To see, if he or she so chooses, three of baseball’s most compelling pitchers (Francisco Liriano, Anibal Sanchez, and Stephen Strasburg) make starts for their respective teams.

• To speculate idly — today and for the duration of the month — on which players will move to which teams before the July 31st trade deadline.

• To be assaulted by the thousand miniature anxieties of which baseball fandom is also composed.

On a Barely Related Note
On a barely related note, the author — because he will perhaps have no better opportunity to do it — the author would like to announce that, despite having been organized by the abominable Eno Sarris, that the FanGraphs-cum-BeerGraphs event in Chicago last (Thursday) night was a decided success and attended both by the very sweetest people and also, eventually, Dayn Perry.

On a More Related Note
On a more related note, what follows is footage of right-handed Cleveland prospect Danny Salazar’s first appearance back at Triple-A Columbus following his very excellent major-league debut.

First, of Salazar throwing what is likely his excellent split-changeup to Philadelphia minor-leaguer Steve Susdorf for a strikeout:

And then, two batters later, of Salazar throwing a fastball recorded at (it appeared) 98 mph on the stadium gun — in this case, to strike out Leandro Castro.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Pittsburgh at Cincinnati | 19:10 ET
Francisco Liriano (76.2 IP, 78 xFIP-, 1.8 WAR) faces Mike Leake (117.0 IP, 104 xFIP-, 1.4 WAR). Of note regarding the former is this table, which includes the league’s top starters by swinging-strike rate (min. 50 IP):

Rank	Name	Team	IP	K%	BB%	SwStr%
1	Francisco Liriano	Pirates	76.2	25.3%	8.9%	14.6%
2	Yu Darvish	Rangers	119.1	32.5%	8.5%	13.3%
3	Matt Harvey	Mets	130.0	29.3%	5.6%	12.7%
4	Anibal Sanchez	Tigers	92.0	29.4%	7.1%	12.3%
5	Max Scherzer	Tigers	129.2	30.1%	6.1%	12.3%

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Pittsburgh Radio or Television, Maybe.

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 5.3.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Ricky Nolasco	LAN	6	2	7	2	10	WAS	St. Strasburg	19:05
David Price	TB	8	10	7	6	5	TOR	Esmil Rogers	19:07
Andy Pettitte	NYA	5	3	5	8	4	BOS	Felix Doubront	19:10
Kyle Kendrick	PHI	3	1	4	6	5	NYN	Jeremy Hefner	19:10
Francisco Liriano	PIT	10	6	7	3	5	CIN	Mike Leake	19:10
Wei-Yin Chen	BAL	2	8	6	3	9	TEX	Derek Holland	20:05
Tim Hudson	ATL	6	7	6	2	7	CHA	John Danks	20:10
Scott Kazmir	CLE	6	7	4	3	1	MIN	Mike Pelfrey	20:10
Anibal Sanchez	DET	10	7	8	6	7	KC	Ervin Santana	20:10
Jacob Turner	MIA	7	2	5	4	5	MIL	Kyle Lohse	20:10
Joe Saunders	SEA	3	6	3	2	3	HOU	Bud Norris	20:10
Jason Marquis	SD	0	6	2	4	1	STL	Jake Westbrook	20:15
Jeff Samardzija	CHN	9	4	6	8	3	COL	Jorge de la Rosa	20:40
A.J. Griffin	OAK	5	6	5	6	3	LAA	Jered Weaver	22:05
Ian Kennedy	AZ	3	2	4	6	4	SF	Chad Gaudin	22:15

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.