Daily Notes: Pitcher NERD, Now Featuring Pace

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

1. Pitcher NERD, Now Featuring Pace
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Pitcher NERD, Now Featuring Pace
What the Reader Needs to Know
A thing the reader might need to know — to benefit from the present discussion, at least — is that NERD is the very proprietary watchability metric crafted artisanally by the present author and found daily in these Notes. (Read more about NERD here.)

What Else the Reader Needs to Know
Another thing the reader should know — again, with a view to benefiting from the present discussion — is that Pitcher NERD is the version of NERD which applies to pitchers exclusively.

A Note Regarding Pitcher NERD, Its Improvement
It has recently and somewhat emphatically been brought to the author’s attention that, while widely (and correctly) regarded as infallible, that Pitcher NERD might also (paradoxically?) benefit from the inclusion of an additional variable — namely, from the addition of pitcher pace.

A Note Regarding Pitcher Pace, What It Is
Introduced to the present site about 2.5 years ago, pitcher pace is a measure of the time (in seconds) each pitcher takes between his pitches.

A Note Regarding Pitcher Pace, Its Relevance to Watchability
The relevance of pitcher pace to watchability is probably obvious. Insofar as the time between pitches does not directly contribute to the action of a game, any pitcher who reduces that amount of time necessarily increases the proportion of action to non-action.

A Note Regarding Pitcher Pace, Its Average and Range
With regard to pitcher pace, a normal figure for a starter is about 22 seconds. The very best starters by this measure (Mark Buehrle, R.A. Dickey) typically average about 17 or 18 seconds between pitches. The very worst starters (Yu Darvish, Bud Norris, Mike Pelfrey), about 26 seconds. (The complete pace leaderboard can be found here.)

On Integrating Pitcher Pace into Pitcher NERD
After careful inspection both my means of his eyes and his heart, the author has concluded that adding half of a pitcher’s pace z-score — that is, the number of standard deviations relative to league-average pace, divided by two — to his overall NERD score is both good and very good.

Therefore, Updated Pitcher NERD Components
Here are the updated components included in the calculation now of Pitcher NERD:

• xFIP
• Swinging-Strike Rate (SwStrk)
• Strike Rate (Strk)
• Velocity (Velo)
• Age
• Pace
• ERA-xFIP (Luck)
• Knuckleball Rate (KN)

Updated Pitcher NERD Formula
Here’s the updated formula itself (where z represents the z-score for the relevant metric):

(zxFIP * 2) + (zSwStrk / 2) + (zStrk / 2) + zVelo + zAge + (zPace / 2) + Luck + (KN * 5) + Constant

Results: Greatest Increase
Here are the three pitchers whose NERD scores most increase with the new addition:

Name	Pace	zPace	oNERD	nNERD
R.A. Dickey	16.8	2.67	8	9
Mark Buehrle	17.7	2.19	2	3
Roy Halladay	18.4	1.82	4	5

Results: Greatest Decrease
Here are the pitchers whose NERD scores were most negatively affected by the addition of pace:

Name	Pace	zPace	oNERD	nNERD
Mike Pelfrey	26.6	-2.54	1	0
Bud Norris	26.0	-2.22	3	2
Yu Darvish	26.0	-2.22	10	10

Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
Pittsburgh at New York NL | 19:10 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Pirates left fielder Starling Marte is currently among the top-10 field players by WAR (1.8). While due for BABIP regression (his current mark is .404), he does possess an exciting and useful skill set that allows him to provide value in basically every facet of the game.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

Toronto at Tampa Bay | 19:10 ET
R.A. Dickey pitches for Toronto. “How many seconds will he take between pitches?” one doesn’t actually probably wonder. In any case, “About 17” is the answer.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto 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 5.2.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Bartolo Colon	OAK	6	7	7	10	7	CLE	Scott Kazmir*	12:05
CC Sabathia	NYA	5	6	5	7	4	COL	Jeff Francis	15:10
Doug Fister	DET	5	7	5	3	4	WAS	Dan Haren	16:05
Jeremy Guthrie	KC	5	6	5	7	3	BAL	Freddy Garcia*	19:05
Kevin Correia	MIN	2	3	5	9	6	BOS	John Lackey*	19:10
Jeff Locke	PIT	1	8	3	7	2	NYN	Dillon Gee	19:10
R.A. Dickey	TOR	9	5	8	7	8	TB	David Price	19:10
Jason Vargas	LAA	1	4	3	5	3	HOU	Lucas Harrell	20:10
Cole Hamels	PHI	6	2	6	5	7	AZ	Patrick Corbin	21:40
Julio Teheran	ATL	6	8	5	5	3	SF	Ry. Vogelsong	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.