Daily Notes: The Effects of Burch Smith on the Human Brain

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

1. Featured Game: St. Louis at San Diego, 22:10pm ET
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: St. Louis at San Diego, 22:10pm ET
Regarding This Game, What a Reasonable Person Might Say
An entirely reasonable person could say, with regard to tonight’s Cardinals-Padres game, that it is not, strictly speaking, the most watchable of today’s scheduled games — because, for example, Mets right-hander Matt Harvey is facing the Reds this afternoon, or because, for other example, Justin Verlander faces Cleveland tonight, which club is 1.5 games ahead of Verlander’s Detroiters.

What the Author Would Contend
What the author would contend — is, in fact, contending by having boldly declared it the Featured Game — is that there is no other game from which we might learn more than the present one. The author would go on to reference vaguely “something he read” on the link between learning and pleasure. He would almost certainly use the word “dopamine” more than once. He would then change the subject by means of a mostly humorous segue.

Regarding This Game, What One Might Learn
A thing a spectator might learn during the course of this game is what sort of claim Burch Smith might have to a starting role in the future. Despite having posted a 30.3% strikeout rate and 80 xFIP- in his first two major-league starts, Smith has also conceded 11 runs in just 6.1 innings.

A Second Thing One Might Learn
A second thing one might learn during the course of this game is if Smith’s changeup is likely to be as good again as this one he threw to Denard Span last week:

A Third and Fourth Thing
The third and fourth things a spectator might learn with regard to Burch Smith are whether he’ll utilize his curve at all, really, and also to what degree he will or won’t sustain his mid-90s velocity as his pitch count increases.

Additionally
Additionally, for St. Louis, left-hander Tyler Lyons is making his major-league debut tonight — which pitcher (i.e. Lyons) the author not only saw in spring training this March but also upon whom that author wrote ca. 130 words. One might learn how accurate the author was when he made the claim, in re Lyons, that he throws a slider at “82 mph, keeps [it] low, and with which he [is capable of inducing] a number of swings and misses.”

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

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Seattle at Los Angeles AL | 19:05 ET
Brandon Maurer (40.2 IP, 115 xFIP-, -0.2 WAR) faces C.J. Wilson (55.2 IP, 104 xFIP-, 0.5 WAR). Of note: the Angels are projected to post this fourth-best record over the remainder of the season, and to still finish at 81-81.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Seattle Radio or Television, Probably.

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 5.9.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Vance Worley	MIN	3	3	4	8	4	ATL	Paul Maholm	12:10
Mat Latos	CIN	7	5	8	7	10	NYN	Matt Harvey	13:10
Hyun-Jin Ryu	LAN	7	2	6	5	6	MIL	Wily Peralta	13:10
Jarrod Parker	OAK	3	6	5	4	6	TEX	Ross Wolf*	14:05
Trevor Cahill	AZ	5	4	5	8	3	COL	Jorge de la Rosa	15:10
Gio Gonzalez	WAS	6	2	6	6	8	SF	Ma. Bumgarner	15:45
Jeremy Hellickson	TB	5	7	4	4	3	TOR	Mark Buehrle	16:37
Jeff Samardzija	CHN	9	5	9	7	10	PIT	Francisco Liriano*	19:05
Justin Verlander	DET	9	8	8	9	7	CLE	Ubaldo Jimenez	19:05
Hiroki Kuroda	NYA	4	6	4	7	2	BAL	Jason Hammel	19:05
Brandon Maurer	SEA	4	6	4	5	3	LAA	C.J. Wilson	19:05
Cliff Lee	PHI	7	1	4	0	4	MIA	Kevin Slowey	19:10
Clay Buchholz	BOS	7	8	6	1	6	CHA	Hector Santiago	20:10
James Shields	KC	7	7	6	4	6	HOU	Jordan Lyles*	20:10
Tyler Lyons*	STL	7	2	9	6	13	SD	Burch Smith*	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.