Daily Notes: Largely Concerning Jenrry Mejia’s Start Today

August 17, 2013

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

1. Largely Concerning Jenrry Mejia’s Start Today
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Largely Concerning Jenrry Mejia’s Start Today
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post is mostly to announce that Mets right-hander Jenrry Mejia both (a) has been excellent thus far in his return to the majors and (b) is pitching tonight (Saturday) at 8:40pm ET.

Regarding Mejia’s Performance to Date
Through four starts and over 24.1 innings, the 23-year-old Mejia has recorded strikeout and walk rates of 22.5% and 3.1%, respectively — marks which would place him 23rd and first overall, also respectively, among 91 qualified starters. His ground-ball rate of 57.5%, moreover, would be second-best among that same population.

A Haphazard Comparison Involving Jenrry Mejia
Here’s a haphazardly selected statistical comparison between Mejia and another pitcher (in this case, Adam Wainwright) whom the author noticed has a similar profile — in this case, featuring each pitcher’s defense-independent performance over the last month:

Name	Team	IP	K%	BB%	GB%	vFA (pfx)	xFIP-
Jenrry Mejia	Mets	24.1	22.5%	3.1%	57.5%	92.3	65
Adam Wainwright	Cardinals	36.0	22.2%	6.3%	58.2%	91.3	76

Mejia and Wainwright, Another Similarity
Beyond some statistical similarities over the past month, what Mejia and Wainwright also have in common is that each throws a fastball with cutting action about one-third of the time.

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Action Footage: Jenrry Mejia’s Slider
Here’s action footage from Mejia’s August 8th start against Colorado of the right-hander striking out Corey Dickerson on an excellent slider:

Slower Action Footage: That Same Slider
And here’s slower action footage of that same pitch:

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Houston at Los Angeles AL | 21:05 ET
Dallas Keuchel (114.0 IP, 90 xFIP-, 0.4 WAR) faces Garrett Richards (93.2 IP, 88 xFIP-, 1.1 WAR).

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston Radio, Perhaps?

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 5.8.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Trevor Cahill	AZ	5	3	4	7	3	PIT	Jeff Locke	16:05
Hiroki Kuroda	NYA	5	3	6	9	8	BOS	John Lackey	16:05
Joe Kelly	STL	4	3	4	5	3	CHN	Travis Wood	16:05
Chad Bettis*	COL	8	7	6	9	3	BAL	Bud Norris	19:05
Clayton Kershaw	LAN	10	3	5	0	3	PHI	Kyle Kendrick	19:05
Wade Davis	KC	4	7	6	7	7	DET	Doug Fister	19:08
Chris Sale	CHA	10	1	7	3	7	MIN	Andrew Albers*	19:10
Mat Latos	CIN	8	3	5	4	4	MIL	Yovani Gallardo	19:10
Matt Cain	SF	5	5	5	1	7	MIA	Hend. Alvarez	19:10
J.A. Happ	TOR	0	5	4	10	6	TB	R. Hernandez	19:10
St. Strasburg	WAS	10	2	8	8	8	ATL	Mike Minor	19:10
Felix Hernandez	SEA	10	4	8	3	8	TEX	Martin Perez	20:05
Jenrry Mejia	NYN	10	7	7	6	3	SD	Edinson Volquez	20:40
Ubaldo Jimenez	CLE	3	7	5	6	6	OAK	Dan Straily	21:05
Dallas Keuchel	HOU	7	4	7	7	7	LAA	Garrett Richards	21:05

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.