Daily Notes: Mets Right-Hander Harvey to Debut

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

1. Featured Game: New York NL at Arizona, 21:40 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: New York NL at Arizona, 21:40 ET
Regarding This Game, Why It’s Notable
The thing that’s notable about this game is how it represents the major-league debut of Mets 23-year-old right-handed pitching prospect Matt Harvey.

Regarding Matt Harvey, Who That Is
Harvey was the Mets’ first-round pick (seventh overall) of the 2010 draft out of UNC — and was, before that, a third-round pick by the Angels out of a Connecticut high school (although he didn’t sign).

Regarding Matt Harvey, His Prospect Status
Harvey was ranked first among Mets prospects this past offseason by John Sickels of Minor League Ball and first by Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus and second (to Zack Wheeler) by our Marc Hulet and second (also to Zack Wheeler) by Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com and second (to Wheeler, again) by Baseball America.

Regarding Matt Harvey, What He Throws
Toby Hyde, Special VIP Gentleman of Mets Minor League Blog, watched — either in person or by way of video somehow — watched Harvey’s second-to-last minor league start, July 16th against Tigers Triple-A affiliate Toledo.

Here’s what Harvey threw in that start, according to Hyde:

• A fastball at 93-95, which sat at 94 mph.
• A curveball.
• A changeup.

Regarding Matt Harvey, What Else He Throws
The internet is pretty clear about — and Hyde mentions in the aforementioned piece — about how Harvey throws a plus slider, as well.

Harvey’s Line at Triple-A Buffalo
Here’s Harvey’s line this season at Triple-A Buffalo: 110.0 IP, 9.16 K/9, 3.93 BB/9, 0.74 HR/9, 3.70 FIP.

Largely Unhelpful Video of Harvey
Here’s video of Harvey from that July 16th start that’s unlikely to augment the reader’s understanding of who Harvey is or what he throws:

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast
Per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project, FanGraphs readers prefer New York NL Television (link).

Other Notable Games
Detroit at Cleveland | 19:05 ET
Justin Verlander (148.2 IP, 80 xFIP-, 4.3 WAR) versus Zach McAllister (56.0 IP, 93 xFIP-, 1.2 WAR) is a more interesting pitching matchup on July 26th than even the most clairvoyant clairvoyant person could have reasonably expected. Like, if there’s a clairvoyant training academy somewhere, then whoever’s instructing there certainly didn’t know that Zach McAllister would have a strikeout-walk differential of over 15 percentage points over halfway through the season.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland Radio.

Pittsburgh at Houston | 20:05 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Sometimes, at the gym, if there’s no live game on, I’ll watch the previous day’s Astros game on my iPhone solely for the broadcast stylings of Jim Deshaies.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston 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 5.1.

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
James Shields	TB	8	5	6	0	7	BAL	Chris Tillman*	12:35
Tommy Milone	OAK	6	4	5	7	4	TOR	Aaron Laffey	12:37
Chris Capuano	LAN	6	1	7	9	5	STL	Jake Westbrook	13:45
Justin Verlander	DET	9	4	7	4	7	CLE	Zach McAllister	19:05
A.J. Burnett	PIT	7	4	2	3	0	HOU	Dallas Keuchel	20:05
Edwin Jackson	WAS	6	7	4	7	5	MIL	Yovani Gallardo	20:10
Matt Harvey*	NYN	12	4	8	8	7	AZ	Wade Miley	21:40
Luis Mendoza	KC	3	7	2	4	3	SEA	Jason Vargas	22:10

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.