Daily Notes, Featuring a Perfect NERD

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

1. Featured Game: St. Louis at Detroit, 19:05 ET (MLB.TV Free Game)
2. The College World Series: Still Happening
3. Today’s Complete MLB Schedule

Featured Game: St. Louis at Detroit, 19:05 ET
The Significance of This Game
This — so far as the author can tell — is the first game of the season to register a perfect NERD score of 10.

What Is NERD, For Those Who Don’t Know
NERD represents an attempt to measure the likely interest a player or team or game might have to the baseball nerd (which is probably you, by virtue of the fact that you’re reading this).

Links That Exist on the Internet
Click here for more information on Pitcher and Team NERD scores and here for how Game NERD Scores are calculated.

This Game, In Particular — What’s So Good About It
Firstly, that Justin Verlander is starting it for Detroit. Here are some of his notable numbers (with ranks among 112 qualified starters in parentheses)*: 101.2 IP (1st), 25.9% K (8th), 5.8% BB (27th), 2.95 SIERA (8th), 77 xFIP- (6th), 3.5 WAR (1st), 94.5 mph average fastball (4th), +10.1 fastball linear-weight runs above average (6th), +5.3 curveball linear-weight runs above average (3rd).

*Doesn’t include Monday games.

This Game, In Particular — What Else Is Notable
Here are three other notable qualities of this game, presented in bullet-point fashion:

• The entirely proficient Lance Lynn (81.2 IP, 84 xFIP-, 2.0 WAR) pitches for St. Louis.
• The Cardinals have the best offense in the league by wRC+ (which is how you tell which team has the best offense in the league).
• Both team are very much in pennant races. Per Cool Standings (as of Monday), St. Louis’s and Detroit’s playoff odds are 57% and 23%, respectively.

What Would Make the Game a Little Better
What would make the game a little better is if it were being played in front of a better center-field camera.

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

The College World Series: Still Happening
The Sherman Johnson World Series
The College World Series continues tonight at 8pm ET as Sherman Johnson and the Florida State Seminoles play the team Sherman Johnson is facing. The loser is eliminated.

For more on Sherman Johnson, click here.

Today’s Complete MLB 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 4.8.

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

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Tim Hudson	ATL	6	6	5	6	4	NYA	Hiroki Kuroda	19:05
Mike Leake	CIN	7	4	5	3	5	CLE	Josh Tomlin	19:05
Josh Outman*	COL	6	10	6	5	10	PHI	Cole Hamels	19:05
Scott Diamond	MIN	7	3	3	2	0	PIT	Kevin Correia	19:05
Lance Lynn	STL	9	10	10	5	10	DET	Justin Verlander	19:05
David Price	TB	9	5	6	4	2	WAS	C-M Wang*	19:05
Tommy Hunter	BAL	4	4	6	1	6	NYN	Johan Santana	19:10
Mark Buehrle	MIA	4	2	3	5	3	BOS	Clay Buchholz	19:10
Luke Hochevar	KC	5	6	3	5	4	HOU	Wandy Rodriguez	20:05
Travis Wood	CHN	3	3	3	6	5	CHA	Jake Peavy	20:10
Undecided	TOR	5	6	6	6	5	MIL	Undecided	20:10
Erasmo Ramirez*	SEA	7	4	6	4	7	AZ	Daniel Hudson	21:40
Aaron Harang	LAN	3	4	4	4	4	OAK	Bra. McCarthy	22:05
Barry Zito	SF	0	5	4	3	4	LAA	C.J. Wilson	22:05
Scott Feldman	TEX	2	10	2	5	3	SD	Edinson Volquez	22:05

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.