Daily Notes, Featuring All the Teams Without Hope

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

1. All the Teams Without Hope
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

All the Teams Without Hope
Woody Allen on Hope
Here’s a brief passage from Woody Allen’s book Without Feathers regarding hope:

How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not “the thing with feathers.” The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich.

Norm MacDonald on Hope
Here’s an excerpt from Norm MacDonald’s special Me Doing Standup, in which he discusses hope briefly — like around the 5:40 mark, mostly. (Note: this clip contains English swear words.)

Table: All the Teams Without Hope
Here are all teams without any more hope in 2012 (where hope is defined as “having at least a five percent chance of making the playoffs per Cool Standings on Wednesday night when the author made this table”):

Team	W	L	Playoff%
Chicago NL	46	70	0.0
Houston	39	80	0.0
Colorado	44	71	0.0
Minnesota	50	67	<0.1
Philadelphia	54	63	<0.1
Miami	53	65	<0.1
San Diego	52	67	<0.1
Cleveland	54	63	0.1
Milwaukee	52	64	0.1
Kansas City	51	65	0.2
New York NL	55	62	0.2
Toronto	55	62	1.1
Seattle	55	64	1.3

Other Notable Games
Los Angeles NL at Pittsburgh | 16:05 ET
The Pirates, right now, are on what scientists refer to in their science labs all the time as the “precipice” of playoff contention.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Pittsburgh Radio, Sort Of.

Chicago AL at Toronto | 19:07 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Top Prospect Anthony Gose Status Update, Sponsored by the Ontario Ministry of Tourism (“It’s all here in Ontario!”): 72 PA, .188/.257/.234 (.324 BABIP), 40 wRC+, -0.3 WAR.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

Oakland at Kansas City | 20:10 ET
Right-hander Dan Straily, who is made from shimmering and organic crystal, makes his third major-league start. Here’s his line so far: 10.2 IP, 21.3% K, 4.3% BB, 20.6% GB, 4.10 SIERA, 106 xFIP-, -0.2 WAR.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Oakland 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 5.3.

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
Derek Holland	TEX	6	7	5	7	8	NYA	Ivan Nova	13:05
Joe Blanton	LAN	8	1	8	5	7	PIT	A.J. Burnett	16:05
Clay Buchholz	BOS	4	6	4	1	5	BAL	Chris Tillman	19:05
Francis. Liriano	CHA	7	4	3	6	2	TOR	Aaron Laffey	19:07
Matt Harvey	NYN	9	2	4	4	6	CIN	Homer Bailey	19:10
Jason Marquis	SD	5	6	5	7	8	ATL	Kris Medlen*	19:10
Dan Straily*	OAK	10	6	7	8	5	KC	Luke Hochevar	20:10
Cliff Lee	PHI	9	5	6	7	8	MIL	Marco Estrada	20:10
Trevor Cahill	AZ	5	7	5	9	4	STL	Kyle Lohse	20:15
Ricky Nolasco	MIA	4	2	3	8	5	COL	Alex White	20:40
David Price	TB	10	4	8	8	5	LAA	Dan Haren	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.