Daily Notes: Largely Concerning Roy Oswalt’s Rockies Debut

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

1. Featured Game: Colorado at Washington, 19:05 ET
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Colorado at Washington, 19:05 ET
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post is to alert the reader to how veteran right-hander Roy Oswalt is making his debut tonight (Thursday) for the Colorado Rockies against Washington.

The Purpose of a Different Post
The purpose of a different post the author ought to have written probably 1.5 months ago would have concerned how Roy Oswalt has signed a minor-league deal with the Colorado Rockies.

Concerning Roy Oswalt’s Velocity in the Minors
According to Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post, Oswalt was “consistently at 92 mph” and “hitting 95 on occasion” during his June 9th start for Double-A Tulsa. In another piece by the Post — in this case by Irv Moss — Oswalt himself suggested that he’s “not 94 (mph) anymore” but still throwing at “91, 92.”

Concerning Roy Oswalt’s Results in the Minors
The 35-year-old Oswalt made five minor-league starts within the Rockies system — all with Double-A Tulsa. Over those five starts, he posted this line: 33.1 IP, 6.75 K/9, 1.89 BB/9, 1.35 HR/9, .218 BABIP, 2.16 ERA, 4.28 FIP. Readers should note that, while likely to allow home runs to right-handers at an above-average rate for the Texas League, Tulsa’s ONEOK Field is otherwise mostly neutral.

Concerning the Rockies, Their Prospects at the Moment
As of Wednesday night, at least, the Rockies appear to be 2.5 games out of first place in the National League West. FanGraphs’ very scientific and totally clairvoyant projected standings suggest that, with Oswalt, the Rockies are still most likely to finish two games behind Arizona in the NL West.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Milwaukee at Houston | 14:10 ET
Yovani Gallardo (87.2 IP, 92 xFIP-, 0.8 WAR) faces Lucas Harrell (84.1 IP, 118 xFIP-, 0.0 WAR). Of note regarding the Brewers offense: it appears to feature both the second- and 14th-best qualified batters according to WAR and also the eighth- and 14th-to-last by that same measure.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Milwaukee 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. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.3.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Bran. Cumpton*	PIT	7	6	7	5	9	CIN	Homer Bailey	12:35
John Danks	CHA	7	1	4	3	3	MIN	Scott Diamond	13:10
A.J. Griffin	OAK	5	6	5	4	6	TEX	Josh Lindblom*	14:05
Yovani Gallardo	MIL	5	4	3	3	1	HOU	Lucas Harrell	14:10
Roy Oswalt*	COL	9	9	8	2	9	WAS	J. Zimmermann	19:05
Matt Moore	TB	3	9	5	4	5	NYA	Andy Pettitte	19:05
John Lackey	BOS	6	8	7	7	8	DET	Jose Alvarez*	19:08
Jon Niese	NYN	3	6	6	8	8	ATL	Mike Minor	19:10
Scott Feldman	CHN	3	5	4	3	6	STL	Lance Lynn	20:15
Felix Hernandez	SEA	10	4	5	7	0	LAA	Tommy Hanson	22:05
Stephen Fife	LAN	8	2	4	9	0	SD	Jason Marquis	22:10
Tom Koehler	MIA	6	0	5	6	6	SF	Chad Gaudin*	22:15

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.