Daily Notes: Regarding the Oakland Lineup, Mostly

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

1. Featured Game: Oakland at Chicago AL, 14:10 ET
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Oakland at Chicago AL, 14:10 ET
On What’s Happening in This Game
What’s happening in this game is the Oakland lineup — the Oakland lineup that features terrifying right-handed batters like Chris Carter (121 PA, 184 wRC+, .310 BABIP) and Yoenis Cespedes (328 PA, 144 wRC+, .358 BABIP) and Jonny Gomes (248 PA, 137 wRC+, .339 BABIP) — is once again facing a left-handed pitcher, in this case sling-shotting PYT Chris Sale (132.0 IP, 80 xFIP-, 3.9 WAR).

What the Author Would Assume
The author would assume that, owing to presence of the aforementioned and terrifying right-handed batters, that the Oakland lineup will have been — were one to examine the numbers — will have been particularly productive against left-handed pitchers.

What’s Actually the Case
In point of fact, it appears as though the Oakland offense has exhibited almost no platoon split whatsoever. Regard:

Vs. RHP: 2870 PA, 90 wRC+, .270 BABIP
Vs. LHP: 1440 PA, 92 wRC+, .280 BABIP

One Possible Exception to Note
It’s quite possible that the Oakland offense has, in fact, been more potent against left-handers since late-June, when Chris Carter was promoted from Triple-A Sacramento.

A Potentially Startling Fact
A potentially startling fact is that, before Carter’s promotion on June 29th, Oakland had faced 22 left-handed starters on the season and countered with a right-handed hitting first baseman just four times, instead giving the majority of the starts to the left-handed batting Daric Barton and Kila Ka’aihue.

An Additional and Potentially Startling Fact
An additional, potentially startling fact is that the right-handed hitting first basemen in those four games were middle infield-types Adam Rosales (three times) and Brandon Hicks (once).

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast
Per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project, FanGraphs readers prefer Oakland Radio (link).

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Colorado at San Francisco | 16:05 ET
It may surprise the reader to learn that Josh Rutledge is the Rockies starting shortstop at the moment. It may surprise the reader even harder that this is Rutledge’s line so far as a major leaguer: 106 PA, .324/.340/.627 (.325 BABIP), 151 wRC+, 1.1 WAR.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco 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 4.5.

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
Jon Lester	BOS	7	6	4	3	6	CLE	Corey Kluber*	13:05
Phil Hughes	NYA	5	6	3	6	5	TOR	J.A. Happ	13:07
Chris Capuano	LAN	6	1	5	2	6	MIA	Wade LeBlanc*	13:10
Bruce Chen	KC	4	7	3	1	5	BAL	Tommy Hunter	13:35
Ross Ohlendorf	SD	2	6	3	5	5	PIT	Erik Bedard	13:35
Lance Lynn	STL	8	9	6	5	5	PHI	Vance Worley	13:35
Yovani Gallardo	MIL	6	8	4	4	5	HOU	Jordan Lyles	14:05
Bartolo Colon	OAK	5	6	7	4	10	CHA	Chris Sale	14:10
James Shields	TB	8	4	6	4	6	MIN	Scott Diamond	14:10
Johnny Cueto	CIN	7	4	4	1	6	CHN	Brooks Raley*	14:20
Rick Porcello	DET	7	5	6	8	7	TEX	Yu Darvish	15:05
Jason Vargas	SEA	3	3	4	7	5	LAA	Jered Weaver	15:35
Alex White	COL	5	8	3	3	0	SF	Barry Zito	16:05
Ross Detwiler	WAS	5	6	5	7	6	AZ	Patrick Corbin	16:10
Ben Sheets	ATL	5	7	4	3	7	NYN	Jon Niese	20:00

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.