Daily Notes: Ft. High-Quality Games for All Your Baseball Needs

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

1. High-Quality Games for All Your Baseball Needs
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

High-Quality Games for All Your Baseball Needs
Introduction
What the author takes for granted, so far as the reader is concerned, is that he or she is looking for a high-quality baseball experience with no muss and even less fuss. To that end, the author has prepared below a curated list of three of the day’s games.

St. Louis at Pittsburgh, 7:05pm ET
It’s not necessarily a fact, but probably should be, that more men died in the construction of these two cities, combined, than in all of World War I. Uncooperative, history is. What is a fact, however, is how both these clubs are presently deep within the agonizing throes of Playoff Hunt Fever, a condition so mysterious the CDC won’t answer the author’s daily phone calls about it that he’s been making for either three weeks or a month now.

Cleveland at Detroit, 7:08pm ET
The mainstream media, with its wretched East Coast bias, probably isn’t even aware that this game exists. But these two cities have coasts of their own, reader — abreast of lakes which aren’t called “great” for nothing. In this particular rencontre, one finds Scott Kazmir facing Anibal Sanchez, both having produced seasons of note for one or the other reason. One finds, moreover, in the Clevelanders, a team with a non-negligible chance of earning a wild-card berth (the Detroiters having more or less already won the AL Central).

Tampa Bay at Oakland, 9:10pm ET
When Sonny Gray sets his mind to something, Sonny Gray won’t relent until he has mastered that thing. That’s the impression one gets, at least, from how well undersized right-hander Sonny Gray has pitched thus far in the majors. Strikeouts? Limiting walks and home runs? “Sonny Gray’s various bailiwicks!” the people cheer. Not unlike the previous two games, this one as well has Playoff Implications.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
New York NL at Washington | 19:05 ET
Zack Wheeler (76.1 IP, 110 xFIP-, 0.4) faces Dan Haren (139.0 IP, 101 xFIP-, 0.9 WAR).

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL 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 5.5.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Scott Feldman	BAL	3	9	6	3	8	NYA	Ivan Nova	13:05
Jeremy Guthrie	KC	2	8	6	6	9	TOR	R.A. Dickey	13:07
Cliff Lee	PHI	9	0	5	4	4	CHN	Chris Rusin	16:05
Zack Wheeler	NYN	6	6	6	3	6	WAS	Dan Haren	19:05
Lance Lynn	STL	6	3	6	6	8	PIT	A.J. Burnett	19:05
Scott Kazmir	CLE	6	7	8	7	10	DET	Anibal Sanchez	19:08
Jerome Williams	LAA	4	7	5	3	6	MIL	Marco Estrada	19:10
John Danks	CHA	6	1	6	9	6	BOS	Jake Peavy	19:10
Jacob Turner	MIA	3	1	5	8	7	ATL	Mike Minor	19:10
Joe Saunders	SEA	2	4	4	4	6	HOU	Dallas Keuchel	19:10
Mike Pelfrey	MIN	0	3	3	4	6	TEX	Matt Garza	20:10
Greg Reynolds*	CIN	4	3	4	7	3	COL	Juan Nicasio	20:10
Ryan Vogelsong	SF	2	4	4	3	5	AZ	Trevor Cahill	21:05
Alex Cobb	TB	7	10	8	7	9	OAK	Sonny Gray	21:10
Andrew Cashner	SD	7	6	6	3	5	LAN	Chris Capuano	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.