Daily Notes: Ft. A Playoff Adjustment for NERD Game Scores

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

1. A Playoff Adjustment for NERD Game Scores
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

A Playoff Adjustment for NERD Game Scores
Introduction
The ongoing concern of the author — and the concern, probably, of at least one reader — is, each day, to watch a baseball game which might be best described as “rich and compelling.” For much of the season, such games are defined largely by the quality of the pitching matchup in question. Young and hard-throwing and quick-working and (ultimately) effective starters: this is the order of the day. If those pitchers’ opponents are some combination of productive and powerful and swift-footed, so much the better.

With the advent of September, however, the concerns of the spectator change. If it weren’t the case before, it’s certainly a fact now, that only a minority of clubs are playing actual meaningful games — and, while one has no interest in abandoning entirely the aesthetic considerations of the game, it’s also true that the value of a game as a spectacle depends, to some degree, on the impression that one, if not both, clubs have a real stake in victory.

With a view towards representing this shift, the author has accordingly produced here a version of NERD — that is, the very proprietary and also infallible watchability score available daily in these Notes — has produced a version of NERD designed to reflect the influence of each team’s playoff odds on the watchability of their respective games.

Playoff-Adjusted Team NERD Scores: A Calculation
In calculating a playoff-adjusted Team NERD score, the author has taken for granted that teams which are closest to a 50% chance of qualifying for their league’s respective divisional series (50.0% DOFF) will inherently make for a more compelling spectacle.

To identify such teams, the author has started by finding the absolute value of (50.0% – DOFF%). Second, he’s subtracted that result from 50.0%. Third, he’s multiplied that result by 20, which puts the final result on a scale of 0-10.

So, for example, one finds that as of Monday, Tampa Bay had a 48.1% chance of making the ALDS. Accordingly, the calculation goes as follows:

1. abs(50.0% – 48.1%) = 1.9%.

2. 50.0% – 1.9% = 48.1%.

3. 48.1% * 20 = 9.6, rounded up to 10.

And here’s the calculation for Texas as of Monday:

1. abs(50.0% – 74.80%) = 24.8%

2. 50.0% – 24.8% = 25.2%

3. 25.2% * 20 = 5.0, rounded to 5.

It’s the effect of this methodology to reduce most teams’ NERD scores to zero, or near zero, a result which seems perhaps severe, but which also serves to reflect the actual urgency with which each team forced to play its September games.

Playoff-Adjusted NERD Game Scores: A Calculation
For reasons noted above, NERD Game Scores typically weight each game’s starting pitchers much more heavily than the respective teams to which each belongs — by a factor of three, precisely. The playoff-adjusted NERD Game Scores further down in this post have been calculated in precisely the opposite manner — that is, by weighing the Team NERD scores three times as heavily as the respective Pitcher NERD scores. The effect of this appears largely to deflate the attendant Game Scores of teams whose playoff odds are closer to 100% or 0%, rather than inflate the scores of those teams in playoff contention.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Baltimore at Cleveland | 19:05 ET
Chris Tillman (167.0 IP, 99 xFIP-, 1.5 WAR) faces Ubaldo Jimenez (141.1 IP, 101 xFIP-, 1.4 WAR).

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.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Chris Tillman	BAL	5	1	2	1	4	CLE	Ubaldo Jimenez	19:05
Chris Sale	CHA	10	0	2	1	5	NYA	Hiroki Kuroda	19:05
Gio Gonzalez	WAS	7	1	2	0	6	PHI	Ethan Martin	19:05
Max Scherzer	DET	9	0	2	1	4	BOS	Jon Lester	19:10
Carlos Torres	NYN	7	0	2	0	7	ATL	Kris Medlen	19:10
Michael Wacha	STL	10	6	8	10	9	CIN	Homer Bailey	19:10
Tom Koehler	MIA	4	0	1	0	5	CHN	Edwin Jackson	20:05
Undecided	MIN	5	0	1	0	2	HOU	Jarred Cosart	20:10
Gerrit Cole	PIT	10	4	3	0	3	MIL	Yovani Gallardo	20:10
Erasmo Ramirez	SEA	7	0	1	0	2	KC	Bruce Chen	20:10
Ricky Nolasco	LAN	6	0	1	0	5	COL	Jhoulys Chacin	20:40
Todd Redmond	TOR	5	0	1	0	6	AZ	Wade Miley	21:40
Matt Moore	TB	5	10	5	0	3	LAA	Jason Vargas	22:05
Martin Perez	TEX	7	5	6	7	4	OAK	Bartolo Colon	22:05
Ma. Bumgarner	SF	7	0	1	0	4	SD	Robbie Erlin	22:10

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.