Daily Notes: The Actual Daisuke Matsuzaka to Pitch Today

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.