Daily Notes: Public Service Announcement re: Rick Porcello

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

1. Public Service Announcement Regarding Rick Porcello
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Public Service Announcement Regarding Rick Porcello
The Purpose of This PSA, Generally
The purpose of this public service announcement, like most public service announcements, is to raise awareness about an important issue in today’s society.

The Purpose of This PSA, Specifically
Specifically, the pressing issue about which awareness ought to be raised is how Detroit right-hander Rick Porcello is starting today for Detroit (against Cleveland) at ca. 4pm ET.

What the Public Ought to Know
What a prospective viewer ought to know is that, after distinguishing himself as one of May’s absolutely best starters, Porcello was also excellent in his first start of June, posting a 7:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio and 1.95 single-game xFIP against Baltimore (box).

The Significance of Porcello’s Achievement
What makes Porcello’s last month-plus significant is that, for about the four seasons and one month preceding it, he was almost entirely uniform in his production, always posting a strikeout rate of 12-14%, a walk rate of 5.5-7.5% and a ground-ball rate of 50-54%.

The Significance of Porcello’s Achievement, cont.
In (sometimes more, sometimes less start) contrast to those figures just quoted, here are Porcello’s strikeout, walk, and ground-ball rates over the last 30 days: 26.0%, 4.9%, 55.4%.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast
Per the results of our crowdsourcing project from the 2011-2012 offseason, FanGraphs readers prefer Cleveland Radio (link).

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Miami at New York NL | 13:10 ET
Jose Fernandez (59.1 IP, 90 xFIP-, 0.8 WAR) faces Matt Harvey (83.0 IP, 75 xFIP-, 2.7 WAR). Also notable besides those pitchers: how Miami has given some playing time of late to more interesting options than one might have realized.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL 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 5.6.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Tommy Hanson	LAA	0	6	4	9	6	BOS	Felix Doubront	13:05
Yu Darvish	TEX	10	4	7	6	4	TOR	Mark Buehrle	13:07
Jose Fernandez	MIA	10	0	8	6	10	NYN	Matt Harvey	13:10
Kevin Correia	MIN	1	3	3	2	6	WAS	Gio Gonzalez	16:05
A.J. Burnett	PIT	7	5	8	5	10	CHN	Jeff Samardzija	16:05
Justin Masterson	CLE	7	8	8	7	9	DET	Rick Porcello	16:08
Kevin Gausman*	BAL	8	9	7	6	5	TB	Jeremy Hellickson	16:10
Andy Pettitte	NYA	5	5	4	6	2	SEA	Joe Saunders	16:10
Tommy Milone	OAK	5	6	5	0	6	CHA	John Danks*	16:10
C.J. Wilson	LAA	4	6	6	9	7	BOS	Clay Buchholz	19:15
Erik Bedard	HOU	0	4	4	5	7	KC	Ervin Santana	19:15
Kyle Kendrick	PHI	3	3	4	4	4	MIL	Tom Gorzelanny*	19:15
Eric Stults	SD	4	7	5	9	5	COL	Jeff Francis	19:15
Tyler Lyons	STL	7	3	6	5	7	CIN	Mat Latos	19:15
Kris Medlen	ATL	4	9	6	2	7	LAN	Stephen Fife*	22:10
Madis. Bumgarner	SF	7	4	5	3	4	AZ	Trevor Cahill	22:10

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.