Daily Notes, Featuring the Miller’s Tale

September 22, 2012

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

1. Featured Game: Milwaukee at Washington, 13:05 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Milwaukee at Washington, 13:05 ET
Regarding the Original Miller’s Tale
In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a miller tells a story about a carpenter with a beautiful young wife. The wife has an affair with a clerk. The clerk, following a series of events too complex to recount here, receives a hot poker “amidde the ers” — which, the reader will know, is one of the worst places to receive a hot poker.

Regarding a Second Miller’s Tale
A second Miller’s Tale concerns the present iteration of the Milwaukee Brewers. In it, the team loses its second-best player during the offseason. Then, after more than half a season of mediocrity, they trade away their other second-best player. Then, they become more or less the best team in the entire league.

Regarding the Two Millers’ Tales, A Similarity
The thing that’s similar about about both Millers’ Tales is the championship-level narratives present in both.

Regarding the Two Millers’ Tales, A Difference
One difference between the two millers’ tales (one assumes, at least) is the amount of hot pokers being thrust at or near erses.

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A Note on Who’s Pitching for Milwaukee
Young right-hander Wily Peralta (21.0 IP, 93 xFIP-, 0.6 WAR) starts for Milwaukee. In addition to having pitched quite well, Peralta has also featured the third-hardest fastball (95.5 mph) among all pitchers to’ve thrown at least 20 innings as a starter.

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

Other Notable Games
Baltimore at Boston | 13:10 ET
The poorly conceived playoff-odds adjustment in NERD (itself the infallible watchability metric sired by the author) now actually penalizes the Baltimore Orioles, owing to how their (i.e. the Orioles’) playoff odds are so high — ca. 93%, per Cool Standings.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Boston Radio.

Pittsburgh at Houston | 19:05 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
After their loss to Houston on Friday night (box), the Pirates are now 74-76, which is likely disappointing to anyone who possesses Basic Human Compassion.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston Television.

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 3.7.

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
Wily Peralta	MIL	10	9	8	6	8	WAS	Gio Gonzalez	13:05
Travis Blackley	OAK	4	7	4	7	7	NYA	Ivan Nova	13:05
Adam Wainwright	STL	8	8	5	2	3	CHN	Travis Wood	13:05
Randy Wolf	BAL	3	2	1	5	2	BOS	Aaron Cook	13:10
Mark Buehrle	MIA	4	4	4	2	10	NYN	R.A. Dickey	13:10
Mike Minor	ATL	4	6	4	5	8	PHI	Roy Halladay	16:05
Stephen Fife	LAN	3	1	3	4	7	CIN	Mat Latos	16:06
Samuel Deduno	MIN	1	4	4	4	7	DET	Doug Fister	16:05
Kevin Correia	PIT	2	4	0	3	0	HOU	Dallas Keuchel	19:05
Ubaldo Jimenez	CLE	1	2	1	7	3	KC	Will Smith	19:10
Brandon Morrow	TOR	6	4	5	6	7	TB	Matt Moore	19:10
Patrick Corbin	AZ	7	7	4	7	5	COL	Jeff Francis	20:10
Jose Quintana	CHA	5	4	5	8	5	LAA	Dan Haren	21:05
Andrew Werner	SD	8	7	6	4	9	SF	Mad. Bumgarner	21:05
Matt Harrison	TEX	5	7	2	4	3	SEA	Blake Beavan	21:10

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.

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Brazen Reader

13 years ago

I fail to see the difference betwixt the tales, did not the Miller Ryan Braun ram a hot poker amidde the ers of Bud Selig’s drug testing program?

yolo

Reply to Brazen Reader

lol, bro you clownin

Sabermetric Solutions

The wrath of Overlord Bud will smite you down for that comment. His regime does not approve.