Daily Notes: The Actual Daisuke Matsuzaka to Pitch Today by Carson Cistulli August 23, 2013 Table of Contents Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes. 1. The Actual Daisuke Matsuzaka to Pitch Today 2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game 3. Today’s Complete Schedule The Actual Daisuke Matsuzaka to Pitch Today The Purpose of This Post The purpose of this post is to announce how former Seibu and Boston right-hander Daisuke Matsuzaka will start for the New York Nationals tonight (Friday) at 7:10pm ET. Regarding Matsuzaka, Where He’s Been Since his last major-league appearance on October 3rd, 2012, against the New York Americans (box), the 32-year-old Matsuzaka appears to have been: granted free agency by Boston (October 29), signed by Cleveland (February 13), released by Cleveland (March 24), signed again by Cleveland (March 26), released again by Cleveland (August 20), and signed by New York (August 22). Regarding Matsuzaka, What He’s Done With Triple-A Columbus this year, Matsuzaka was entirely serviceable, if not necessarily impressive, recording strikeout and walk rates of 22.0% and 9.1%, respectively, and a 3.96 FIP over 19 starts and 103.1 innings. Regarding Matsuzaka, His Velocity Now According to a source close to the situation and also close to Newsday’s Marc Carig, it would appear, Matsuzaka’s fastball sat at 87-91 mph during a recent start with Columbus. Regarding Matsuzaka, His Velocity Then Here, per PITCHf/x, are Matsuzaka’s average fastball velocities from 2007 to -12 with Boston: Year Velo 2007 92.4 2008 91.9 2009 91.0 2010 92.1 2011 90.0 2012 90.7 Avg. 91.7 Regarding Matsuzaka, His Velocity Then-Then Here’s an animated GIF of a 19-year-old Matsuzaka throwing a fastball at 155 km/h (96 mph) in his NPB debut with Seibu in 1999: Action Footage: Matsuzaka’s Curve or Slider Here’s footage from Matsuzaka’s most recent start, on August 19 against Baltimore affiliate Norfolk, of the right-hander throwing a slider or curve* to Eric Thames for a called strike: Action Footage: Matsuzaka’s Changeup, Probably Here’s footage from later in that same plate appearance — in this case, of what appears to be Matsuzaka’s changeup for a strikeout: *Per Brooks Baseball, Matsuzaka didn’t really throw a curve at all in 2012. That said, this pitch appears to have more vertical movement than one might generally expect from a slider proper. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game Toronto at Houston | 20:10 ET Todd Redmond (43.1 IP, 104 xFIP-, 0.5 WAR) faces Jordan Lyles (109.1 IP, 105 xFIP-, 1.0 WAR). Of note regarding Houston: over the last 30 days, the club has produced the sixth-best home-run rate as a team, at 2.9%. Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston Radio, Perhaps? 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 5.7. Note: the following table is entirely sortable. Away SP Tm. Gm. Tm. SP Home Time Wade Miley AZ 6 3 6 0 8 PHI Cole Hamels 19:05 Samuel Deduno MIN 3 4 4 7 3 CLE Ubaldo Jimenez 19:05 Dan Straily OAK 5 6 5 9 3 BAL Bud Norris* 19:05 Jhoulys Chacin COL 5 8 5 1 4 MIA Tom Koehler 19:10 Doug Fister DET 7 7 7 7 8 NYN D. Matsuzaka* 19:10 Yovani Gallardo MIL 3 3 5 3 9 CIN Homer Bailey 19:10 Hiroki Kuroda NYA 5 3 5 10 5 TB Chris Archer 19:10 Martin Perez TEX 7 3 7 2 10 CHA Chris Sale 20:10 Todd Redmond TOR 4 6 5 4 5 HOU Jordan Lyles 20:10 Gio Gonzalez WAS 7 3 5 7 2 KC Bruce Chen 20:10 Kris Medlen ATL 6 8 7 3 9 STL A. Wainwright 20:15 Garrett Richards LAA 8 8 8 4 9 SEA Felix Hernandez 22:10 John Lackey BOS 7 9 6 3 5 LAN Ricky Nolasco 22:10 Edwin Jackson CHN 4 5 4 6 3 SD Edinson Volquez 22:10 Charlie Morton PIT 7 6 7 5 7 SF M. Bumgarner 22:15 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.