Daily Notes: Top 2013 Draft Prospect to Pitch Tonight

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

1. College World Series: Ryne Stanek to Pitch Tonight
2. Today’s Notable MLB Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

College World Series: Ryne Stanek to Pitch Tonight
What Is Happening Tonight, Specifically
Specifically, what is happening tonight is the Arkansas Razorbacks are playing the South Carolina Gamecocks in a College World Series game at 9pm ET.

What’s Happening Tonight, Even More Specifically
Even more specifically, what’s happening tonight is sophomore right-hander Ryne Stanek is pitching for Arkansas.

One Thing About Ryne Stanek
Of Stanek, Baseball America’s Aaron Fitt wrote this in March — with regard to Stanek’s prospects for the 2013 draft:

[H]is rapidly improving ability to utilize his stuff by attacking the strike zone (without trying too hard to be too fine) makes him a strong early candidate to be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2013 draft.

A Second Thing About Ryne Stanek
Of Stanek, Fitt wrote this in March also — with regard to Stanek’s repertoire in an early March start:

His fastball ranged from 93-97 mph, still sitting at 93-95 in the seventh inning. He effectively mixed in a pair of hard breaking balls — an 81-83 curveball and an 85-86 slider — as well as an improved 84-86 changeup.

Three GIFs of Stanek’s Slider or Curve
Here are three GIFs of either Stanek’s slider or curve from a May 22nd start against Mississippi State (box).

No. 1

No. 2

No. 3

A Note on That Start, Stanek’s Performance in It
From what I watched of that game against Mississippi State, Stanek’s fastball appeared to be sitting more in the 90-91 mph range, and he walked almost as many as he struck out (7:5 K:BB) in 5.2 innings. In Stanek’s most recent appearance — Game Two of the Super Regional against Baylor — Stanek both walked and struck out four in 4.0 innings (box).

Broadcast Information
The Arkansas-South Carolina game appears both on ESPN2 and online at Watch ESPN at 9pm ET.

Today’s Notable MLB Games
Baltimore at New York NL | 19:10 ET
By every measure, R.A. Dickey (who starts tonight) has been excellent. Line: 90.0 IP, 26.2% K, 5.5% BB, 51.8% GB, 2.70 SIERA, 74 xFIP-, 2.1 WAR.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

Kansas City at Houston | 20:05 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
The virtues of this game do not immediately reveal themselves; however, if one has not watched an Astros broadcast, that same one should certainly consider watching an Astros broadcast.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston Television.

San Francisco at Los Angeles AL | 22:05 ET
Matt Cain struck out just over half the batters he faced in his last start (box). The remaining 13 batters had some difficulty reaching safely, as well.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio.

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 4.8.

Note: the following Game Scores include the poorly conceived playoff-odds adjustment discussed in a recent edition of Daily Notes. Also note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away   SP Tm. Gm. Tm. SP   Home Time
Mike Minor ATL 4 6 7 6 9 NYA CC Sabathia 19:05
Mat Latos CIN 6 4 3 3 1 CLE Derek Lowe 19:05
Jake Arrieta BAL 8 4 9 2 10 NYN R.A. Dickey 19:10
Jonath. Sanchez KC 0 6 2 5 6 HOU J.A. Happ 20:05
Matt Garza CHN 8 2 5 7 5 CHA Zach Stewart 20:10
Henders. Alvarez TOR 4 5 4 6 1 MIL Randy Wolf 20:10
Hector Noesi SEA 3 5 4 4 6 AZ Wade Miley 21:40
Matt Cain SF 8 4 7 3 5 LAA Jerome Williams 22:05
Matt Harrison TEX 5 10 2 5 1 SD Jason Marquis 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.





Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.

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ThePatton
11 years ago

If you would have told me at the beginning of the year that Jake Arrieta vs R.A. Dickey would have a 9 NERD score I wouldn’t have believed you.