Daily Notes: Two Notable Rookie Performances from Saturday

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

1. Two Notable Rookie Performances from Saturday
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Two Notable Rookie Performances from Saturday
Two rookie pitchers made notable appearances on Saturday. What follows is Priceless Information regarding both.

Player: Danny Farquhar, RHP, Seattle (Profile)
Line: 2.2 IP, 8 TBF, 5 K, 0 BB, 1 GB on 3 batted-balls, 0.36 xFIP
Notes: Having been dominant so far this season at Triple-A Tacoma (20.0 IP, 30 K, 4 BB), the 26-year-old Farquhar was promoted Friday. Saturday’s 2.2-inning relief performance represented the right-hander’s major-league debut. Farquhar’s 0.36 xFIP was the lowest among any pitcher to record more than a single inning of work on Saturday. He sat at 92-96 with his four-seam fastball and complemented it what what appears to be a cutter or slider and also a slower (ca. 80 mph) curve. Of the 17 pitches classified by Brooks Baseball as four-seam fastballs, Farquhar recorded four swinging strikes.

Here’s a fastball for a strikeout against Mark Reynolds in the seventh inning:

And another to Drew Stubbs for a strikeout in the following inning:

Player: Tom Koehler, RHP, Miami (Profile)
Line: 6.0 IP, 23 TBF, 7 K, 2 BB, 9 GB on 14 batted-balls, 2.66 xFIP
Notes: Making just his third career major-league start, Koehler posted the lowest single-game xFIP among all starters on Saturday, en route to conceding just a single run in six innings against Arizona. Of note: his fastball sat in the 91-95 mph range, and he was still hitting 94, it appears, towards the end of his appearance. Though he threw it only six times, his cutter/slider was quite effective, inducing three swinging strikes.

Here he is throwing it to Paul Goldschmidt in the first inning on an 0-1 count:

And again, on a 1-2 count, for the strikeout — in slow motion, in this case:

Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
Seattle at Cleveland ***MLB.TV Free Game*** | 13:05 ET
Conveniently, today’s most watchable game is also its free-est one. Felix Hernandez (64.2 IP, 65 xFIP-, 2.2 WAR) faces Justin Masterson (63.0 IP, 91 xFIP-, 1.4 WAR). The latter has posted so far what would be a career-best strikeout rate (23.2%) — and what is about six percentage points higher than his established level between 2010 and 2012.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland Radio.

Detroit at Texas | 20:05 ET
Were the Steamer and ZiPS projections systems to play out the remainder of the season — and not the actual players in the major leagues themselves — these two clubs would likely share the distinction of best record in baseball.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Texas 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 4.9.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Felix Hernandez	SEA	10	6	8	9	6	CLE	Ju. Masterson	13:05
R.A. Dickey	TOR	9	4	7	5	6	NYA	CC Sabathia	13:05
Wade Miley	AZ	4	4	3	0	3	MIA	Ricky Nolasco	13:10
Homer Bailey	CIN	9	5	5	0	3	PHI	Jon. Pettibone	13:35
Lucas Harrell	HOU	0	4	2	7	2	PIT	Jeff Locke	13:35
Matt Magill*	LAN	4	2	5	8	6	ATL	Mike Minor	13:35
Matt Moore	TB	5	7	5	8	3	BAL	Chris Tillman	13:35
John Lackey	BOS	7	8	5	3	2	MIN	Pe. Hernandez	14:10
Kyle Lohse	MIL	5	6	5	2	6	STL	John Gast*	14:15
Dillon Gee	NYN	3	7	4	4	4	CHN	Travis Wood	14:20
Jake Peavy	CHA	8	0	5	5	3	LAA	Jason Vargas	15:35
Luis Mendoza	KC	4	6	5	6	5	OAK	A.J. Griffin	16:05
Barry Zito	SF	2	6	4	8	3	COL	Juan Nicasio	16:10
Dan Haren	WAS	4	2	4	5	5	SD	And. Cashner	16:10
Doug Fister	DET	6	7	7	4	9	TEX	Derek Holland	20:05

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.