Daily Notes, Featuring Collin McHugh in St. Louis

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

1. Featured Game: New York NL at St. Louis, 14:15 ET
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: New York NL at St. Louis, 14:15 ET
Regarding This Game, Why It’s Notable
One reason why this game is notable, is on account of right-hander Collin McHugh is making his second major-league start in it for the Mets — and his first major-league start in front of one of the league’s finer cameras.

Regarding McHugh, His First Major-League Start
McHugh, 25, was excellent in his first start, on August 23rd against the Rockies. Regard: 7.0 IP, 23 TBF, 9 K, 1 BB, 4 GB on 12 batted-balls (33.3%), 2.01 xFIP.

Regarding McHugh, His Repertoire
The author — who isn’t bragging or anything, but just noting it for the benefit of the reader — the author recently wrote a piece, with sexy, animated GIFs, examining McHugh’s repertoire of sexy pitches.

Regarding This Game, Another Notable Thing
Another notable thing about this game is how it features, in St. Louis, a team whose playoff fate is undecided.

Regarding St. Louis’s Playoff Fate, How Undecided It Is
Per CoolStandings, the Cardinals presently have a 1.3% chance of winning the NL Central and a 57.3% chance of qualifying for a wild-card spot.

Regarding the Yankees-Rays Game, Why It Isn’t Featured
The author, using his discretion, has declined to feature the Yankees-Rays game, despite its higher NERD score, on account of (a) Tropicana Field plays poorly on camera and (b) the Yankees deduction which the author applies to all games involving that stupid team.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast
Per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project, FanGraphs readers prefer New York NL Television (link).

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Cleveland at Detroit | 13:05 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
The top part of the AL Central, according to CoolStandings:

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland 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 4.9.

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
Jeff Samardzija	CHN	10	2	5	6	5	WAS	Ross Detwiler	13:05
Corey Kluber	CLE	6	2	5	4	7	DET	Anibal Sanchez	13:05
Joe Saunders	BAL	3	1	4	5	5	TOR	J.A. Happ	13:07
Tyler Chatwood	COL	5	8	6	7	9	ATL	Kris Medlen	13:10
Mike Fiers	MIL	7	9	4	4	4	MIA	Ricky Nolasco	13:10
CC Sabathia	NYA	10	6	8	5	8	TB	James Shields	13:10
Tyler Cloyd*	PHI	6	5	4	5	7	CIN	Johnny Cueto	13:10
Edgar Gonzalez*	HOU	6	4	7	4	9	PIT	Jeff Locke*	13:35
Yu Darvish	TEX	8	8	4	7	3	KC	Bruce Chen	14:10
Collin McHugh*	NYN	11	2	7	9	6	STL	Joe Kelly	14:15
C.J. Wilson	LAA	4	8	5	7	6	OAK	Tommy Milone	16:05
Patrick Corbin	AZ	7	6	2	3	0	SF	Barry Zito	16:05
Clay Buchholz	BOS	4	5	2	4	3	SEA	Jason Vargas	16:10
Samuel Deduno	MIN	1	4	3	4	8	CHA	Hector Santiago*	19:10
Andrew Werner*	SD	9	6	7	2	8	LAN	Joe Blanton	20:10

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.