Daily Notes: Baltimore Not Not Relevant Still

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

1. Featured Game: Baltimore at Toronto, 19:07 ET (Free Game)
2. Other Notable Games
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Baltimore at Toronto, 19:07 ET
Regarding These Teams, Their Respective Places in the AL East
I’m not lying to you or your face when I say that these teams enter Wednesday just zero and three games, respectively, out of first place in the AL East.

The Surprising Thing About That, Duh
The surprising thing about that is how Toronto and Baltimore have, generally speaking, been a distant fourth and fifth place in their division for the past three or six years or whatever.

Duh
Duh.

What WAR Says
As of Tuesday afternoon, this is what the entirely infallible WAR standings looked like for the AL East:

Num	Team	WAR W	WAR L	WAR%
1	Tampa Bay	27.0	22.0	0.550
2	Boston	26.0	22.0	0.542
3	Baltimore	26.5	22.5	0.540
4	New York	25.6	22.4	0.533
5	Toronto	21.6	27.4	0.440

What One Can Conclude from That
One can conclude from those infallible WAR standings is that Baltimore actually has played, more or less, like one of the best teams in the AL East so far. Toronto, less so.

What Else One Can Conclude
One can also conclude that — owing to how it took him probably over 30 minutes to construct the above table — that the author is largely unfit for many tasks central to independent adult living.

Jason Hammel Status Update
Baltimore right-hander Jason Hammel, who had a surprisingly effective April, has been almost precisely as effective through four May starts. Regard: 24.0% K (24.0% in April), 7.3% BB (8.0% in April), 51.6% GB (61.2% in April), 3.15 xFIP (3.04 in April).

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast
Per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project, FanGraphs readers prefer Toronto Radio (link).

Other Notable Games
Philadelphia at New York NL | 19:10 ET
It has not escaped the attention of the author (nor should it yours) that the surnames of tonight’s starting pitchers rhyme.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

Washington at Miami | 19:10 ET
Washington’s Chien-Ming Wang makes his first start of the season after taking over Ross Detwiler’s spot in the rotation.

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 5.5.

Note: the following Game Scores include the poorly conceived playoff-odds adjustment discussed in yesterday’s edition of Daily Notes. Also note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Bruce Chen	KC	4	6	4	4	2	CLE	Jeanmar Gomez	12:05
Jose Quintana*	CHA	5	6	6	6	6	TB	Alex Cobb*	13:10
Tyson Ross	OAK	3	2	1	2	2	MIN	Francisco Liriano	13:10
Anthony Bass	SD	7	4	4	3	7	CHN	Ryan Dempster	14:20
Johnny Cueto	CIN	5	4	6	2	9	PIT	A.J. Burnett	19:05
Jason Hammel	BAL	8	5	8	6	6	TOR	Brandon Morrow	19:07
Drew Smyly	DET	6	3	6	5	4	BOS	Jon Lester	19:10
Cliff Lee	PHI	10	4	8	1	8	NYN	Dillon Gee	19:10
Kyle Lohse	STL	4	10	6	7	5	ATL	Tim Hudson	19:10
Chien-Ming Wang*	WAS	6	5	7	4	7	MIA	Josh Johnson	19:10
Blake Beavan	SEA	2	5	4	10	7	TEX	Derek Holland	20:05
Lucas Harrell	HOU	3	6	6	8	10	COL	Christian Friedrich	20:40
Ivan Nova	NYA	8	5	6	3	4	LAA	Ervin Santana	22:05
Yovani Gallardo	MIL	3	6	5	6	9	LAN	Clayton Kershaw	22:10
Ian Kennedy	AZ	5	5	6	5	6	SF	Tim Lincecum	22:15

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