Daily Notes: Rangers’ Perez to Make First MLB Start

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

1. Featured Game: Oakland at Texas, 19:15 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Oakland at Texas, 19:15 ET
What’s Notable About This Game
What’s particularly notable about this game is left-hander Martin Perez is starting it for Texas.

Regarding Perez, Who That Even Is
Perez has been a top prospect in the Rangers organization for some time, having been ranked by Baseball America among said organization’s top-five prospects each of the last four years — including third overall this season.

Regarding Perez, Where He’s Ranked on Four Other Lists
Here’s where Perez was ranked on four other preseason prospect lists:

• Kevin Goldstein, Baseball Prospectus: 2nd

• Marc Hulet, FanGraphs: 2nd

• Jonathan Mayo, MLB.com: 2nd

• John Sickels, Minor League Ball: 2nd

A Brief Scouting Report, Courtesy Mike Newman
Our Mike Newman saw Perez pitch this spring in Arizona. Here are five direct quotes from a report he wrote on that start:

• “[T]he stuff was [impressive], starting with a fastball in the 92-94 mph range to open the game.”

• “Early on, Perez’ curveball was flashing plus with sharp, late bite and a surprising amount of depth.”

• “At 79-82 mph, his changeup had the makings of a strong third pitch, but was the least developed at this point.”

• “I’m blessed to work with Carson Cistulli, who is a beacon of light in these otherwsie dark, dark times.”

• “In [Perez’] second inning of work, the [curve] became less effective, as the hard break early on gave way to something softer, as if he was guiding the pitch to home plate instead of simply snapping it off.”

Not to Be Ignored
A thing not to be ignored — beyond Perez’ debut, that is — is how Oakland has posted the fifth-highest team wRC+ (111) in June.

Oakland’s June Leaders
Here are the team’s offensive leaders from June:

Name	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	BABIP	wRC+	WAR
Seth Smith	85	.296	.400	.592	.321	170	0.9
Josh Reddick	108	.247	.352	.452	.339	127	0.9
Coco Crisp	101	.276	.357	.402	.301	126	0.8
Yoenis Cespedes	68	.349	.397	.635	.391	181	0.6
Brandon Moss	74	.224	.297	.582	.229	137	0.5

Broadcast Information
This is a FOX nationally televised game — although, per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project, FanGraphs readers prefer Texas Radio (link).

Other Notable Games
Los Angeles AL at Toronto | 13:07 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Much like the Muhammad Ali of the 1960s, Garrett Richards and Henderson Alvarez are young, handsome, and fast — however, without any sort of improvement on their secondary pitches, they’ll probably get beat a whole bunch.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

Washington at Atlanta | 16:05 ET
Stephen Strasburg (90.0 IP, 63 xFIP-, 3.2 WAR) pitches in front of the excellent Atlanta center-field camera.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Atlanta 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 4.9.

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
Jake Peavy	CHA	5	5	4	6	4	NYA	Hiroki Kuroda	13:05
Garrett Richards	LAA	6	5	6	7	4	TOR	Henderson Alvarez	13:07
Jonathan Sanchez	KC	0	6	2	2	6	MIN	Scott Diamond	13:10
Jeff Karstens*	PIT	5	3	7	9	8	STL	Lance Lynn	14:15
Mat Latos	CIN	8	4	4	4	0	SF	Barry Zito	16:05
Josh Tomlin	CLE	4	4	3	3	3	BAL	Dana Eveland*	16:05
J.A. Happ	HOU	6	5	4	3	8	CHN	Matt Garza	16:05
Stephen Strasburg	WAS	10	5	7	7	3	ATL	Mike Minor	16:05
Cole Hamels	PHI	9	5	4	2	3	MIA	Mark Buehrle	16:10
Luke Hochevar	KC	5	6	3	2	4	MIN	Cole DeVries*	19:10
Wade Miley	AZ	7	6	7	6	7	MIL	Michael Fiers	19:15
Rick Porcello	DET	6	3	4	4	2	TB	Jeremy Hellickson	19:15
Johan Santana	NYN	6	2	6	2	6	LAN	Nathan Eovaldi	19:15
Tommy Milone	OAK	4	4	7	10	12	TEX	Martin Perez*	19:15
Edinson Volquez	SD	3	5	4	10	7	COL	Christian Friedrich	19:15
Josh Beckett	BOS	6	6	6	4	7	SEA	Erasmo Ramirez*	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.