Daily Notes: Mat Latos Is a Talking Point, Bam

July 13, 2012

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

1. Featured Game: St. Louis at Cincinnati, 19:10 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: St. Louis at Cincinnati, 19:10 ET
A Thing That Will Surprise You
A thing that will surprise you, the marvelous reader, is perhaps that tonight’s starter for Cincinnati, Mat Latos, after a generally miserable April and May, currently has a 95 xFIP- (i.e. park- and league-adjusted xFIP, where below 100 is better).

Regarding Mat Latos, His xFIPs by Month
Here are Latos’s xFIPs by month this season, so far (month and innings pitched in parentheses): 4.79 (April, 28.2 IP), 4.00 (May, 30.1), 3.02 (June, 38.2), 2.26 (July, 7.0).

What a Reasonable Person Might Suggest
A person — an entirely reasonable one, in fact — might suggest, after looking at Mat Latos’s month-by-month xFIPs, that some manner of “trend” has revealed itself.

Regarding Latos’s Improvement, If It’s Related to Fastball Velocity
Regard, a fact: it does not necessarily appear as though Latos’s average fastball velocity has changed substantially since the beginning of the season.

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Regarding the Word Necessarily in the Above Entry, Why the Author Used It
The author has likely used the word necessarily in the above entry because he’s averse to making strong claims — prefers, instead, to couch such claims among as many qualifiers as is reasonable to use without rendering a sentence entirely meaningless.

Regarding All This Sort of Information, Where One Can Find It
Much of the above information can be found at very important internet website FanGraphs.com (link). Or in the reader’s heart, too. Either/or.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast
Per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project, FanGraphs readers prefer St. Louis Radio (link).

Other Notable Games
Detroit at Baltimore | 19:05 ET
Can Jason Hammel continue to Jason Hammel in the Jason Hammel?!? America is wait-ting!!!

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Detroit Radio (although, note: the Detroit audio feed might not feature the above-average Baltimore center-field camera angle).

Oakland at Minnesota | 20:10 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Right-hander A.J. Griffin (18.0 IP, 105 xFIP-, 0.2 WAR) and his Curveball of Desire face whatever is the name of the team from Minnesota.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Oakland 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 Game Scores include the poorly conceived playoff-odds adjustment discussed in a recent edition of Daily Notes. Also note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Ian Kennedy	AZ	6	6	4	1	3	CHN	Paul Maholm	14:20
C.J. Wilson	LAA	3	5	4	7	5	NYA	Hiroki Kuroda	19:05
Doug Fister	DET	7	5	7	1	7	BAL	Jason Hammel	19:05
Justin Masterson	CLE	5	5	5	8	2	TOR	Ricky Romero	19:07
Franklin Morales	BOS	7	5	6	4	2	TB	Jeremy Hellickson	19:10
Adam Wainwright	STL	9	9	8	4	8	CIN	Mat Latos	19:10
Jordan Zimmermann	WAS	8	6	6	3	7	MIA	Josh Johnson	19:10
Chris Young	NYN	1	2	5	8	5	ATL	Tim Hudson	19:35
Jose Quintana	CHA	7	5	4	5	4	KC	Bruce Chen	20:10
A.J. Griffin*	OAK	7	4	5	3	5	MIN	Francisco Liriano	20:10
James McDonald	PIT	6	4	6	7	9	MIL	Zack Greinke	20:10
Cliff Lee	PHI	9	5	6	10	7	COL	Christian Friedrich	20:40
Clayton Richard	SD	4	5	5	2	9	LAN	Clayton Kershaw	22:10
Derek Holland	TEX	6	9	3	3	3	SEA	Kevin Millwood	22:10
Jordan Lyles	HOU	4	5	5	4	9	SF	Madison Bumgarner	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.