Daily Notes: Saturday’s Games, Rated for Watchability

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

1. Today’s Notable Games
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Today’s Notable Games
Los Angeles NL at Pittsburgh | 16:05 ET
Clayton Kershaw (100.1 IP, 83 xFIP-, 2.6 WAR) faces Brandon Cumpton (N/A). The latter makes his major-league debut in place of the injured A.J. Burnett. His most relevant numbers at Triple-A Indianapolis: 11 G, 10 GS, 65.1 IP, 6.75 K/9, 3.03 BB/9, 0.55 HR/9, 3.69 FIP. Tim Williams of Pirates Prospsects has a very current and also thorough scouting report on Cumpton. A brief summary of same: Cumpton is ground-ball oriented; his slider isn’t hopeless; might have trouble against left-handed batters.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Pittsburgh Radio or Television.

San Francisco at Atlanta | 16:05 ET
Chad Gaudin (42.2 IP, 99 xFIP-, 0.6 WAR) faces Mike Minor (84.2 IP, 93 xFIP-, 1.6 WAR). The former, despite vomiting twice during the course of it, posted a 7:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio against Arizona in his last start (box). In fact, Gaudin has been rather more effective than one might have otherwise expected during his limited time as a member of the San Francisco rotation, posting a 3.18 xFIP in 12.0 innings.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

Seattle at Oakland | 19:15 ET
Felix Hernandez (97.2 IP, 63 xFIP-, 2.9 WAR) faces A.J. Griffin (83.1 IP, 104 xFIP-, 0.8 WAR). Nick Franklin Status Update: 63 PA, 12.7% BB, 15.9% K, .309/.397/.509 (.349 BABIP), 158 wRC+, 0.8 WAR. Mike Zunino Status Update: 8 PA, 12.5% BB, 25.0% K, .286/.375/.714 (.250 BABIP), 201 wRC+, 0.1 WAR.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Oakland Radio.

Washington at Cleveland | 19:15 ET
Jordan Zimmermann (94.2 IP, 91 xFIP-, 2.1 WAR) faces Scott Kazmir (52.1 IP, 99 xFIP-, 0.3 WAR). Not particularly related to that is this, a table of the top-five teams by park-adjusted home-run rate (or, at least by the author’s likely flawed calculation of same):

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland or Washington Radio.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Arizona at San Diego | 22:10 ET
Wade Miley (77.1 IP, 105 xFIP-, 0.6 WAR) faces Jason Marquis (77.2 IP, 122 xFIP, -1.2 WAR). A brief glance suggests that the latter almost certainly has recorded the largest gap among starting pitchers between WAR as calculated by FIP (-1.2) and WAR as calculated by runs allowed (+0.6).

Author’s Preferred Broadcast: Arizona Television.

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
Scott Feldman	CHN	3	5	4	6	3	NYN	Jon Niese	13:10
John Lackey	BOS	6	9	6	8	3	BAL	Freddy Garcia	16:05
Clayton Kershaw	LAN	9	3	7	6	7	PIT	Br. Cumpton*	16:05
Chad Gaudin*	SF	7	6	7	8	8	ATL	Mike Minor	16:05
R.A. Dickey	TOR	8	5	6	3	6	TEX	Josh Lindblom*	16:05
Jeremy Guthrie	KC	2	4	5	9	8	TB	Alex Cobb	16:10
Yovani Gallardo	MIL	5	4	6	4	9	CIN	Homer Bailey	16:10
Jon. Pettibone	PHI	4	2	6	10	9	COL	Tyler Chatwood	16:10
Lance Lynn	STL	7	3	5	0	6	MIA	Tom Koehler	16:10
John Danks	CHA	7	1	3	3	0	HOU	Lucas Harrell	19:15
Anibal Sanchez	DET	10	7	5	3	1	MIN	Samuel Deduno	19:15
David Phelps	NYA	4	4	3	6	0	LAA	Tommy Hanson	19:15
Felix Hernandez	SEA	10	4	7	7	5	OAK	A.J. Griffin	19:15
Jo. Zimmermann	WAS	9	1	7	7	6	CLE	Scott Kazmir	19:15
Wade Miley	AZ	5	3	3	8	0	SD	Jason Marquis	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.