Daily Notes: Regarding Alex Wood’s Resume, Thus Far

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

1. Regarding Alex Wood’s Resume, Thus Far
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Regarding Alex Wood’s Resume, Thus Far
Introduction
Left-hander Alex Wood, 22, starts tonight (Saturday) against Miami at 7:10pm ET. What follows is a brief examination of his impressive, if short, professional resume.

Alex Wood, How He Was Acquired
Wood was selected by Atlanta in the second round of last year’s (2012’s) draft out of the University of Georgia, where he recorded a 79:25 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 101.1 innings his (red-shirt) freshman year and a 100:21 mark in 102.1 innings his sophomore year. He’s one of only five players* from his draft class, it appears, to have made his major-league debut.

*The other four: Kevin Gausman (Baltimore), Paco Rodriguez (Los Angelels NL), Michael Wacha (St. Louis), and Mike Zunino (Seattle).

Alex Wood, Statistically
Wood has been excellent at every professional level at which he’s competed. After the draft last year, he was assigned to Class-A Rome, where he was excellent (52.2 IP, 25.2% K, 6.8% BB). He began this season with Double-A Mississippi, where he was excellent (57.0 IP, 25.1% K, 6.6% BB). Were one to suppose that, following his promotion to the Braves that Wood was excellent, one would be correct in that assumption, as well. In 39.1 innings, he’s recorded strikeout and walk rates of 26.0% and 8.2%, respectively, while also inducing grounders on 56.4% of batted balls — leading to his current 70 xFIP- and 0.8 WAR.

Alex Wood, His Repertoire
As the PITCHf/x chart below (featuring speed and horizontal movement) reveals, Wood has thrown three different this season: a fastball at 89-95 mph; a changeup at 82-86 mph; and a curve at 76-84 mph (and averaging 81 mph).

Alex Wood, His Changeup
Wood’s changeup, which he throws about four times as often to right-handed, as opposed to left-handed, batters, has been his best pitch both by linear-weight runs relative to average (+3.7) and swinging-strike rate (21.5%).

Action Footage: Alex Wood’s Changeup
Here’s footage from a recent Colorado-Atlanta game of Wood throwing his changeup for a swinging strike to Troy Tulowitzki:

Action Footage: Alex Wood’s Changeup
Here’s footage from later in that same contest of Wood throwing his changeup for a swinging strike — in this case, to DJ LeMahieu:

Regarding Alex Wood, How Many Arms He Appears to Have While Pitching
Ten or 12 arms, looks like.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Texas at Houston | 19:10 ET
Derek Holland (155.0 IP, 86 xFIP-, 4.5 WAR) faces Brad Peacock (36.0 IP, 125 xFIP-, -0.6 WAR). Per CoolStandings, the former club presently has a 75% probability of making the postseason. Per that same site, the latter club (i.e. Houston) has slightly less encouraging prospects.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Texas 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 5.3.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Anibal Sanchez	DET	9	8	6	3	4	NYA	Phil Hughes	13:05
Sonny Gray*	OAK	8	6	6	6	4	TOR	Mark Buehrle	13:07
Wei-Yin Chen	BAL	3	9	4	5	4	SF	Chad Gaudin	16:05
Mike Pelfrey	MIN	1	3	3	1	6	CHA	Andre Rienzo*	16:05
R. Hernandez	TB	6	10	6	3	5	LAN	Zack Greinke	16:05
C.J. Wilson	LAA	5	8	5	7	3	CLE	Ubaldo Jimenez	19:05
Cliff Lee	PHI	9	1	6	2	6	WAS	Taylor Jordan	19:05
Felix Doubront	BOS	4	8	4	6	2	KC	Jeremy Guthrie	19:10
Nathan Eovaldi	MIA	6	2	7	8	10	ATL	Alex Wood	19:10
Tyson Ross	SD	6	6	6	3	7	CIN	Tony Cingrani	19:10
Derek Holland	TEX	9	3	5	4	1	HOU	Brad Peacock	19:10
Carlos Villanueva	CHN	3	5	5	3	7	STL	Michael Wacha*	19:15
Zack Wheeler	NYN	3	6	4	2	6	AZ	B. McCarthy	20:10
A.J. Burnett	PIT	8	7	6	7	4	COL	Juan Nicasio	20:10
Tom Gorzelanny	MIL	6	3	6	5	7	SEA	Hisashi Iwakuma	21:10

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.