Daily Notes: Top Prospect Tyler Skaggs to Debut

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

1. Featured Game: Miami at Arizona, 15:40 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Miami at Arizona, 15:40 ET
Regarding This Game, Why It’s Notable
This game between Miami and Arizona is notable mostly on account of it represents the major-league debut of top prospect Tyler Skaggs.

Regarding Tyler Skaggs, Who That Is
Tyler Skaggs is a 21-year-old left-hander (although, because of his July birthday, one currently in just his age-20 season) originally taken 40th overall by the Angels in 2009 from a California high school. He came to the Diamondbacks as part of the trade that sent Dan Haren to Anaheim in 2010.

Regarding Tyler Skaggs, His Place in Various Rankings
Our Marc Hulet ranked Skaggs 11th overall among all prospects in March and 11th overall among all prospects on his midseason top-50 list. Baseball America ranked Skaggs 13th overall on their preseason list and seventh on their midseason list. John Sickels of Minor League Ball ranked Skaggs 23rd overall in February and then 20th overall on his midseason review.

Regarding Tyler Skaggs, What He Throws
Per Mike Newman, who saw Skaggs at Chattanooga in early May, Skaggs’ best pitch is his curveball — an offering that features, in Newman’s words, “big, true 12/6 break and late biting action.” Per Newman, Skaggs also throws a fastball at 90-92 mph and a decent, but uninspiring, changeup.

Regarding Tyler Skaggs, His Numbers This Season
Here’s Skaggs’ line from 13 Double-A starts: 69.2 IP, 9.17 K/9, 2.71 BB/9, 1.03 HR/9, 3.60 FIP. And from nine starts at Triple-A Reno: 52.2 IP, 7.69 K/9, 2.73 BB/9, 0.68 HR/9, 3.45 FIP.

Regarding This Game, A Second Reason Why It’s Notable
The other reason why this game’s notable is on account of 21-year-old right-hander Jacob Turner is making his Marlins debut in it.

Regarding Jacob Turner, Who That Even Is
Turner was the main piece Detroit sent to Miami in return for Omar Infante and Anibal Sanchez in July. He was ranked first overall among Tigers prospects this preseason by FanGraphs’ Marc Hulet and by Minor League Ball’s John Sickels and also by Baseball America.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast
Per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project, FanGraphs readers prefer Arizona Radio (link).

Other Notable Games
Pittsburgh at San Diego | 18:35 ET
Left-hander Andrew Werner, who starts for the Padres tonight, makes his major-league debut. Here’s his line between Double- and Triple-A this year: 126.1 IP, 7.77 K/9, 2.21 BB/9, 0.50 HR/9, 2.93 FIP. Also, per Minor League Central, here’s his ground-ball rate over the last 262.2 minor-league innings (1097 batters faced): 61.3%.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Neither, Really.

Houston at St. Louis | 20:15 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Here’s Tyler Greene’s line (not including last night) since his recent trade to Houston from St. Louis: 32 PA, .355/.344/.645 (.450 BABIP), 156 wRC+, 0.5 WAR. Here’re his plate-discipline stats: 0.0% walk rate, 31.3% strikeout rate.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston Television or St. Louis 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 4.7.

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
Luis Mendoza	KC	3	8	4	4	8	TB	James Shields	13:10
Travis Wood	CHN	2	2	2	8	6	MIL	Yovani Gallardo	14:10
Liam Hendriks	MIN	4	4	4	6	6	OAK	Tommy Milone	15:35
Zach McAllister	CLE	7	3	4	4	5	SEA	Hisashi Iwakuma	15:40
Jacob Turner*	MIA	9	3	9	7	13	AZ	Tyler Skaggs*	15:40
James McDonald	PIT	5	4	6	5	8	SD	Andrew Werner*	18:35
Kris Medlen	ATL	8	8	5	6	5	WAS	Ross Detwiler	19:05
Bronson Arroyo	CIN	4	5	3	5	5	PHI	Vance Worley	19:05
Aaron Laffey	TOR	2	6	4	4	7	DET	Anibal Sanchez	19:05
Jered Weaver	LAA	4	8	4	6	4	BOS	Clay Buchholz	19:10
Jeff Francis	COL	4	8	5	2	10	NYN	Matt Harvey	19:10
Tommy Hunter	BAL	4	1	4	7	6	TEX	Derek Holland	20:05
Phil Hughes	NYA	5	7	6	4	10	CHA	Chris Sale	20:10
Bud Norris	HOU	6	4	5	9	4	STL	Kyle Lohse	20:15
Wade LeBlanc	MIA	3	3	4	7	7	AZ	Wade Miley	21:40
Matt Cain	SF	7	3	6	1	6	LAN	Chris Capuano	22:10

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.