Daily Notes: Sabathia-Price Mega Showdown Clash

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

1. Featured Game: Tampa Bay at New York AL, 19:05 ET (Free Game)
2. Other Notable Games
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Tampa Bay at New York AL, 19:05 ET
Regarding the Big, Big Deal About This Game
The big, big deal about this game is that it’s the first so far this season to receive a NERD Game Score of 9.

Regarding What a NERD Game Score Is, For Anyone Who Doesn’t Know
For anyone who doesn’t know, NERD is intended to be a numerical representation of a team or a player or a pitcher’s aesthetic appeal, or “watchability.” (Read more about it here, if you even want to). A Game Score is the combination of the pitcher and team scores involved in a specific game.

Regarding the Number of People Denoted by “Anyone Who Doesn’t Know”
Over six billion, definitely.

Regarding What Makes This Game Appealing Supposedly
What makes Tampa Bay starter David Price particularly appealing, for example, is that he’s pitched very well this season (76 xFIP-) while also recording the third-highest average fastball velocity (94.7 mph) among qualified starters. What makes New York starter CC Sabathia particularly appealing is that he’s been quite effective (69 xFIP-) and also that he’s recorded swinging-strike (11.7%) and overall strike rates (66.1%) each over a standard deviation above average for major-league starters.

Regarding How One Could Watch This Game
One, if he were so inclined, could watch this game sans charge, on account of it’s today’s MLB.TV Free Game.

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

Other Notable Games
Texas at Baltimore | Game Two of Doubleheader
Derek Holland and the Texas Rangers face Tommy Hunter and, like, seven other guys who used to play for the Texas Rangers.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Baltimore.

Washington at Pittsburgh | 20:10 ET
Stephen Strasburg pitches in front of what is has become one of the best center-field camera angles in the league.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Pittsburgh.

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.

Regard, a magnificent and sortable table:

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Colby Lewis	TEX	4	10	4	5	2	BAL	Wei-Yin Chen	16:05
Derek Holland	TEX	6	10	5	5	3	BAL	Tommy Hunter	Gm 2
David Price	TB	9	7	9	7	10	NYA	CC Sabathia	19:05
St. Strasburg	WAS	10	1	5	2	2	PIT	Kevin Correia	19:05
Derek Lowe	CLE	1	4	3	5	5	BOS	Josh Beckett	19:10
Hend. Alvarez	TOR	3	5	3	3	1	MIN	Jason Marquis	20:10
Max Scherzer	DET	8	2	5	3	4	OAK	Bartolo Colon	22:05

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.