Daily Notes: Regarding Yu Darvish’s Start Tonight, Mostly

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

1. Featured Game: Chicago AL at Texas, 20:05 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Chicago AL at Texas, 20:05 ET
Regarding This Game, What Makes It Notable
In terms of what makes this game notable, that’s largely due to how Texas right-hander Yu Darvish is starting it for Texas.

Regarding This Game, What’d Make It Even More Notable
What’d make this game even more notable is if Texas right-hander Yu Darvish were somehow starting it for Chicago, instead.

Regarding Yu Darvish, What Makes Him Notable
When you talk about a pitcher, you’re talking about someone whose objective is to prevent runs. And when you talk about a pitcher’s ability to prevent runs, you’re generally talking about his ability to record strikeouts and induce ground balls while also limiting walks. Darvish has done those things to such a degree (39.8% K, 8.1% BB, 59.0% GB) as we would expect him to concede fewer than two earned runs for every nine innings.

Regarding Yu Darvish, One of His Skills
One of Yu Darvish’s main skills is his ability to throw five pitches simultaneously, as this entirely unaltered animated GIF file demonstrates:

A Poor Joke One Might Make with Regard to That Animated GIF
If someone were to make a poor and suggestive joke with regard to that GIF, it would resemble something like this: “That’s not the only thing Yu Darvish can do five times at once.”

Regarding That Joke, One’s Immediate Response
Here’s the response one is likely to have immediately after making such a joke:

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

Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
Pittsburgh at Milwaukee | 20:10 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
As of Monday, the Pittsburgh Pirates had won 15 games, while their collective WAR total as a club would suggest 12.3 wins — the largest such difference among the league’s 30 teams. As of Tuesday morning, following their 10-4 loss to Milwaukee, Pittsburgh’s WAR win total actually declined to 11.8 — which is to say, their performance in that game was somehow worth negative wins.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Milwaukee Radio.

Tampa Bay at Kansas City | 20:10 ET
Here’s a fact that may or may not appeal to the reader: by weighted batter age, the Royals have been the youngest team (26.9) in the major leagues this season. Now here’s a second, related fact: as of Monday, the Royals had given a total of just 29 plate appearances to batters in their age-30 season or higher this year. The remaining 799 belonged to players in their age-29 season or lower.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Tampa Bay 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 5.1.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Philip Humber	HOU	3	7	5	6	5	NYA	Hiroki Kuroda	19:05
Roy Halladay	PHI	5	2	5	9	5	CLE	Zach McAllister	19:05
Jon Lester	BOS	6	9	5	4	2	TOR	Brandon Morrow	19:07
Vance Worley	MIN	4	3	6	5	8	DET	Justin Verlander	19:08
Jeremy Hefner	NYN	0	9	3	0	4	MIA	Kevin Slowey	19:10
Gio Gonzalez	WAS	6	4	6	9	5	ATL	Tim Hudson	19:10
Jose Quintana	CHA	6	2	7	4	10	TEX	Yu Darvish	20:05
Edinson Volquez	SD	3	3	4	3	6	CHN	Edwin Jackson	20:05
James McDonald	PIT	0	7	3	4	5	MIL	Marco Estrada	20:10
Alex Cobb	TB	6	8	7	7	7	KC	James Shields	20:10
Bronson Arroyo	CIN	4	6	5	2	6	STL	Jaime Garcia	20:15
Mad. Bumgarner	SF	9	6	6	4	4	AZ	Trevor Cahill	21:40
Garrett Richards	LAA	10	3	6	7	2	OAK	Jarrod Parker	22:05
Jason Hammel	BAL	0	7	3	4	5	SEA	Brandon Maurer	22:10
Jorge de la Rosa	COL	4	7	5	2	7	LAN	Hyun-Jin Ryu	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.