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.





Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.

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Mark Zuckerberg
11 years ago

A deserving NERD score for Martin Perez.