Daily Notes: It Feels Wrong, But It’s So Wainwright

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

1. Featured Game: Pittsburgh at St. Louis, 20:15 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule
4. Crowdsourcing Broadcasters: Boston Radio

Featured Game: Pittsburgh at St. Louis, 20:15 ET
Regarding What a Person Could Assume About Adam Wainwright
A person — even a person with, like, a degree from an important liberal arts college and health insurance through his work — even that sort of person could reasonably assume that, owing to how Adam Wainwright (tonight’s starter for St. Louis) has conceded 16 runs in 19.2 innings (i.e. has posted a 7.50 ERA), that Wainwright has pitched poorly this season.

Regarding What Is More Likely the Case
It’s more likely the case that, owing to his excellent defense-independent numbers (24.1% K, 5.8% BB, and 52.5% GB in 19.2 IP), that Adam Wainwright has performed like a pitcher who would normally allow fewer than three earned runs per nine innings.

Regarding Wainwright’s Numbers, Career-Wise
Here’s how some of Wainwright’s current defense-independent numbers would compare to past years for him:

• Strikeout Rate: Career-High
• Walk Rate: Career-Low
• Ground-Ball Rate: Career-High

On Who’s Facing Wainwright
Facing Adam Wainwright is Pittsburgh right-hander Charlie Morton.

Of Particular Note re: Charlie Morton
Of particular note regarding Charlie Morton is how his ground-ball rate is at 71.4% through 17.0 innings and also that, while he still utilizes the two-seamer frequently, that he appears to be throwing his curve more often so far (25.3% this year, 16.3% last).

On How Many Things of Note That Actually Was
Two, actually.

A Final Note, Regarding the Center-Field Camera at Busch Stadium
It’s excellent, is what.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast
Per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project, FanGraphs readers prefer Pirates Television (MLB.TV). (Note: Pirates television feed might not have excellent center-field camera angle.)

Select Other Games
Arizona at Washington | 19:05 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Like every other starter on Washington, Jordan Zimmermann has been pretty excellent so far: 27.0 IP, 16.0% K, 2.0% BB, 48.7% GB, 3.47 SIERA, 92 xFIP-, 0.7 WAR. His strike percentage (69.3%) is the third-highest among starters with more than 20 innings.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Arizona.

Oakland at Boston | 19:10 ET
Right-hander Jarrod Parker, 23, makes his third career start and second of the season. He was excellent in his debut. Line: 6.1 IP, 25 TBF, 5 K, 1 BB, 6 GB on 18 batted-balls (33.3%), 2.69 xFIP.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Boston.

Philadelphia at Atlanta | 19:10 ET
Cole Hamels, who leads all qualified starters with a 2.25 xFIP, faces Brandon Beachy (25.2 IP, 101 xFIP-, 0.6 WAR) in front of the league’s best center-field camera.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Tied, Basically.

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 5.2.

Regard, a magnificent and sortable table:

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Trevor Cahill	AZ	4	6	5	0	8	WAS	Jordan Zimmermann	19:05
Brian Matusz	BAL	0	5	3	8	4	NYA	Phil Hughes*	19:05
Luke Hochevar	KC	4	9	6	3	7	DET	Rick Porcello	19:05
Neftali Feliz	TEX	3	10	5	6	6	TOR	Drew Hutchison*	19:07
Jeff Samardzija	CHN	10	1	6	3	4	CIN	Bronson Arroyo	19:10
Jarrod Parker*	OAK	9	3	7	4	6	BOS	Felix Doubront	19:10
Cole Hamels	PHI	10	3	7	8	6	ATL	Brandon Beachy	19:10
Hector Noesi*	SEA	3	4	3	7	2	TB	Matt Moore	19:10
Jonathon Niese	NYN	7	2	6	7	5	HOU	J.A. Happ	20:05
Ubaldo Jimenez	CLE	0	4	5	5	9	CHA	Chris Sale	20:10
Charlie Morton*	PIT	7	2	8	10	9	STL	Adam Wainwright*	20:15
Ted Lilly	LAN	1	5	3	8	3	COL	Jhoulys Chacin	20:40
Shaun Marcum	MIL	5	6	5	5	5	SD	Edinson Volquez	22:05
Francisco Liriano*	MIN	2	5	4	2	6	LAA	Jerome Williams*	22:05
Ricky Nolasco	MIA	5	3	5	6	6	SF	Matt Cain	22:15

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.

Crowdsourcing Broadcasters: Boston Radio
Recently, we released the results of our television broadcaster rankings — itself the product of reader crowdsourcing that started in late November. Now, FanGraphs is asking readers to rate the radio broadcast teams for all 30 major-league clubs (Click here for more on this project.)

Rate other teams: Washington / Toronto / Texas / Tampa Bay / Seattle / San Francisco / San Diego / St. Louis / Pittsburgh / Philadelphia / Oakland / New York (NL) / New York (AL) / Minnesota / Milwaukee / Miami / Los Angeles (NL) / Los Angeles (AL) / Kansas City / Houston / Detroit / Colorado / Cleveland / Cincinnati / Chicago (NL) / Chicago (AL).