Daily Notes: Complete and Updated Team NERD Scores

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

1. Complete and Updated Team NERD Scores
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Complete and Updated Team NERD Scores
Introduction
In June of 2010, in response to a challenge issued by loud-thundering Rob Neyer, the present author submitted to the public the first iteration of a metric called — for reasons that need little elaboration — a metric called NERD. The purpose of NERD: to represent in a single number the likely aesthetic value of a player or team or game to the sabermetrically inclined. Over the last three years, there have been modifications to how NERD is calculated — the variables included in the formula, for example, and how heavily each of those variables is weighted — but the framework remains more or less the same.

What follows, below, are the complete and updated Team NERD scores for all 30 major-league clubs this season.

Sexy Embedded Table: Complete and Updated Team NERD Scores
Here’s a sexy embedded table including every club’s NERD score, by the criteria outlined above. For each team is listed both their overall NERD score and also z-score (i.e. standard deviations from the mean) for each of NERD’s variables. Note that Bat is park-adjusted batting runs relative to average; HR% is park-adjusted home-run rate; BsR is baserunning runs; BULL is bullpen xFIP; UZR is runs saved defensively, according to Ultimate Zone Rating; PAY is opening-day payroll, where lower than average is better, but above average isn’t penalized; AGE is weighted batter age, in years, where younger than average is better, but older isn’t penalized; and Luck actually isn’t a z-score, but rather the different between WAR wins and actual wins divided by two, where 2.0 is the highest assessed value and below 0.0 isn’t penalized.

Sexy Link to a Web Page: Complete and Updated Team NERD Scores
Click this hyperlinked text to see a complete table of Team NERD scores on a single page.

Sexy Link to an Excel File: Complete and Updated Team NERD Scores
Click this hyperlinked text to download an Excel file of every team’s NERD score.

Notes
• In what could reasonably be classified as a “startling turn of events,” Tampa Bay has been one the league’s very best clubs offensively this season. Not only have they produced the second-most park-adjusted runs among the majors’ 30 teams, but they’ve done so — in part, at least — by hitting considerably more home runs than one has come to expect of the Saint Petersburgers. The Rays have recorded a park-adjusted home-run rate of 3.1%, according to the author’s likely flawed calculations — the sixth-best figure in the majors. Club leaders, so far as overall home runs are concerned, are as follows: Evan Longoria (21), Kelly Johnson (15), and Matt Joyce (14).

• One isn’t surprised to learn that Houston features both (a) the lowest of the league’s opening day payrolls and (b) the youngest weighted average batting age. Perhaps one is more surprised to learn that those poorly compensated and very young hitters have outproduced the Yankees.

• Per WAR, The Detroit Tigers “should” have recorded 68 wins thus far — or, nine more than the club’s real-live total of 59. That nine-win game makes them the league’s unluckiest team, by that measure. The luckiest? Pittsburgh, it appears. The Pirates have won 61 games, even while their WAR totals would suggest something closer to 53 or 54.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Toronto at Oakland | 22:05 ET
Esmil Rogers (84.1 IP, 99 xFIP-, 0.6 WAR) faces A.J. Griffin (133.2 IP, 104 xFIP-, 1.2 WAR). The former moved into the rotation at around the beginning of June, and appears to have retained his velocity even in longer outings. In July, for example, Rogers has recorded the 10th-highest average fastball velocity among 111 qualifiers, at 94.3 mph. His defense-independent figures during the month have also been entirely acceptable. To wit: 23.2 IP, 17.3% K, 5.5% BB, 50.0% GB, 3.50 xFIP.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Oakland Radio, Perhaps.

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 5.6.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
David Price	TB	8	10	7	8	5	BOS	Felix Doubront	18:10
Jered Weaver	LAA	4	7	5	4	5	TEX	Matt Garza	19:05
John Danks	CHA	7	2	5	7	3	CLE	Zach McAllister	19:05
Jake Westbrook	STL	1	4	5	7	9	PIT	Fr. Liriano	19:05
Jorge de la Rosa	COL	3	7	6	8	8	ATL	Bran. Beachy*	19:10
Jeremy Hefner	NYN	5	6	5	2	6	MIA	Jacob Turner	19:10
Kyle Lohse	MIL	5	5	6	4	8	CHN	Jeff Samardzija	20:05
Esmil Rogers	TOR	5	7	6	6	6	OAK	A.J. Griffin	22:05
Mike Leake	CIN	5	3	5	6	4	SD	S. O’Sullivan*	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.