Daily Notes: Doubling Down on San Diego’s Burch Smith

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

1. Featured Game: Washington at San Diego, 22:10 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Washington at San Diego, 22:10 ET
First of All, Concerning a Regret of the Author’s
The author would be remiss not to mention how he’s ashamed of having used the phrase “doubling down” in the title of this post, which expression (i.e. “doubling down”) appears to be some manner of card-playing terminology, but which the author has only ever encountered colloquially, and from which expression he’s derived little pleasure previously.

Moving On, With Regards to This Game
Starting this game for San Diego is Burch Smith, to which right-hander’s major-league debut the author dedicated the largest part of his Notes column this past Saturday and about which right-hander’s debut one might reasonably use a word like “Ick” or “Yeesh.”

Burch Smith’s Debut, His Line from It
Here’s Burch Smith’s line from his debut on Saturday (box): 1.0 IP, 10 TBF, 2 K, 2 BB, 2 GB on 6 batted-balls (33.3% GB), 6.46 xFIP.

Regarding Burch Smith, The Author’s Opinion of Him
Despite Burch Smith’s poor debut, the author’s opinion of him is still an optimistic one — first of all, because he (i.e. Smith) has had considerable success in the minor leagues this year and, second of all, because he (i.e. still Smith) sits at about 93-94 mph with his fastball. Also, Smith has limited walks as a minor leaguer. All those qualities tend to serve a pitcher well in the majors.

For Reference: Burch Smith’s PITCHf/x Chart
For the benefit of the readership, here’s a lightly annotated PITCHf/x chart from Burch Smith’s debut, from which chart the reader will conclude that Smith threw almost exclusively fastballs:

Video: Burch Smith’s Fastball, Mostly
Here’s video of Burch Smith’s fastball, mostly, to Tampa Bay leadoff hitter Matt Joyce and set to a MIDI version of Beethoven’s “Für Elise”:

GIFs: Burch Smith’s Curveball
Of the 42 pitches Burch Smith threw in his debut, only three of them were curveballs. Of those three curveballs, however, two of them were called strikes.

Here’s one of those called-strike curves (to Kelly Johnson):

And here’s the other one (to Luke Scott, in this case):

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

Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
Arizona at Miami | 19:10 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
That Trevor Cahill (50.0 IP, 103 xFIP-, 0.7 WAR) faces Kevin Slowey (49.1 IP, 106 xFIP-, 0.8 WAR) in this game is a goddamn fact. That both pitchers have been rather lucky in terms of run prevention (having recorded ERAs of 2.70 and 2.55, respectively) isn’t a fact, but is a probability.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Arizona Television.

Detroit at Texas | 20:05 ET
Rick Porcello (32.1 IP, 92 xFIP-, 0.3 WAR) faces Nick Tepesch (38.0 IP, 88 xFIP-, 0.7 WAR). Regarding Porcello, here’s the line from his first four appearances: 13.0 IP, 3 K, 3 BB, 3 HR. And then from the next three appearances after that: 19.1 IP, 18 K, 4 BB, 2 HR. The latter three starts are markedly better, is the point.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Texas 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 5.8.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Matt Harvey	NYN	10	7	7	4	6	CHN	Edwin Jackson	14:20
Tony Cingrani	CIN	10	4	7	1	6	PHI	Cliff Lee	19:05
Jordan Lyles*	HOU	6	4	6	7	5	PIT	Jeanmar Gomez	19:05
Brandon Maurer	SEA	4	5	6	10	6	CLE	Ubaldo Jimenez	19:05
Jer. Hellickson	TB	5	7	4	7	2	BAL	Jason Hammel	19:05
Mark Buehrle	TOR	3	5	4	5	4	NYA	Hiroki Kuroda	19:05
Trevor Cahill	AZ	4	4	4	0	4	MIA	Kevin Slowey	19:10
Hyun-Jin Ryu	LAN	7	2	6	8	5	ATL	Paul Maholm	19:30
Rick Porcello	DET	7	8	7	4	7	TEX	Nick Tepesch	20:05
Clay Buchholz	BOS	7	9	5	3	3	MIN	Vance Worley	20:10
Wily Peralta	MIL	5	6	6	2	7	STL	Jaime Garcia	20:15
Mad. Bumgarner	SF	8	6	6	7	3	COL	Jorge de la Rosa	20:40
Chris Sale	CHA	8	1	5	5	3	LAA	C.J. Wilson	22:05
James Shields	KC	6	7	5	6	3	OAK	Jarrod Parker	22:05
Gio Gonzalez	WAS	7	2	9	5	14	SD	Burch Smith*	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.