Daily Notes: Featuring Gerrit Cole Against Jose Fernandez

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

1. Featured Game: Pittsburgh at Miami, 13:10 ET
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Pittsburgh at Miami, 13:10 ET
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post — besides serving to keep the present author employed through the weekend — is to announce, for the benefit of the wide readership, how young and hard-throwing Pittsburgh right-hander Gerrit Cole (48.2 IP, 100 xFIP-, 0.6 WAR) faces young and hard-throwing Miami right-hander Jose Fernandez (111.2 IP, 92 xFIP-, 2.0 WAR) at 1:10pm ET today.

Regarding Gerrit Cole, How Young and Hard-Throwing He Is
So far as Gerrit Cole’s years and fastball are concerned, he has 22 of the former and throws the latter at 95.4 mph on average, according to PITCHf/x.

Regarding Jose Fernandez, How Young and Hard-Throwing He Is
With regard to Fernandez’s age and average fastball velocity, those are 20 and 94.7 mph, respectively — the latter figure once again courtesy PITCHf/x.

Regarding Cole, Another of His Notable Qualities
Also notable with regard to Gerrit Cole is that he works rather quickly. His pace of 20.2 seconds between pitches is a full standard deviation better (i.e. faster) than other lanceurs who’ve thrown 20-plus innings in a starting capacity.

And Now in re Fernandez, Another of His Notable Qualities
Apropos Jose Fernandez, one finds that he is among the league’s more accomplished strike-throwers. His strike rate of 65.9% is also a full standard deviation among pitchers with 20 or more innings as a starter.

Regarding Cole, His Strikeout Pitch
Cole’s strikeout pitch — or at least the one which has produced whiffs most often this season — is his changeup, which offering presently features a 18.2% swinging-strike rate.

Here’s an example of Cole’s changeup to a Adam LaRoche from a recent start against Washington:

Regarding Fernandez, His Strikeout Pitch
Fernandez’s top pitch in terms of inducing swings and misses this season has been his curveball, with which the right-hander has recorded a 13.9% swinging-strike rate.

Here’s an example of that curve to Washington’s Ryan Zimmerman that’s actually probably not ideal in terms of location, but still features considerable movement and induces a swinging-strike and is also in slow-motion:

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Kansas City at Chicago AL | 14:10 ET
Bruce Chen (45.2 IP, 120 xFIP-, 0.4 WAR) faces Hector Santiago (93.1 IP, 106 xFIP-, 1.1 WAR). Relevant not to the Chicagos today, but most likely to that club’s future, is the performance of late, and also all season, of infielder Marcus Semien. Just 22 and at Double-A, Semien has produced the following line in July: 107 PA, 23.4% BB, 8.4% K, 7 HR, .378/.523/.756 (.364 BABIP).

Here he is hitting one of his seven home runs this month:

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Difficult to Say.

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 5.4.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Matt Moore	TB	5	10	5	2	5	NYA	Phil Hughes	13:05
Alexi Ogando	TEX	3	4	4	7	4	CLE	Ubaldo Jimenez	13:05
Jarred Cosart*	HOU	7	3	6	7	6	TOR	Todd Redmond*	13:07
Jon. Pettibone	PHI	5	0	6	7	8	DET	Rick Porcello	13:08
Gerrit Cole	PIT	9	7	8	2	10	MIA	Jose Fernandez	13:10
Jon Lester	BOS	5	8	5	8	3	BAL	Jason Hammel	13:35
Carlos Torres*	NYN	6	6	6	2	7	WAS	Taylor Jordan	13:35
Bruce Chen*	KC	4	6	4	2	5	CHA	Hector Santiago	14:10
Tommy Hanson	LAA	2	7	4	6	3	OAK	Jarrod Parker	16:05
Travis Wood	CHN	3	4	5	6	8	SF	Tim Lincecum	16:05
Tony Cingrani	CIN	7	3	5	3	5	LAN	Chris Capuano	16:10
Tom Gorzelanny	MIL	6	5	6	7	5	COL	Jhoulys Chacin	16:10
Kyle Gibson	MIN	3	2	4	5	6	SEA	Erasmo Ramirez*	16:10
Tyson Ross	SD	4	6	6	2	9	AZ	Patrick Corbin	16:10
Shelby Miller	STL	10	4	7	8	5	ATL	Kris Medlen	20:05

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.