Daily Notes, With a Line by David Mamet

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

1. Featured Game: Tampa Bay at New York AL, 19:05 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Tampa Bay at New York AL, 19:05 ET
This Same Matchup Last Night
These same teams played in last night’s featured game, too — won by New York, 7-0 (box).

Three Reasonable Comments About That Game
Here are three comments about that game likely to appeal to a FanGraphs reader:

• Andy Pettitte was unusually excellent. Line: 7.1 IP, 25 TBF, 10 K, 2 BB, 9 GB on 13 batted-balls (69.2%), 1.88 xFIP.
• James Shields, who started for Tampa Bay and has been excellent this season (73.0 IP, 69 xFIP-, 1.2 WAR), recorded more walks (four) than strikeouts (two) for the first time since April of 2011 — or so his game log would have one believe
• Tampa Bay outfielder Desmond Jennings (126 PA, .303 BABIP, 114 wRC+, 1.1 WAR) returned from knee injury, his first appearance since May 11th. ZiPS still projects him to finish with a WAR of 3.7.

An Unreasonable Comment About That Game
Here’s a fourth, considerably less reasonable comment about that game:

• That victory represents a turning point in the Yankees’ season.

That Game, What It Did to the AL East Standings
This. It did this to the AL East standings:

Place	Team	Wins	Losses	Win%
1	Orioles	31	24	0.564
2	Rays	31	24	0.564
3	Yankees	30	24	0.556
4	Blue Jays	29	26	0.527
5	Red Sox	28	27	0.509

On Publishing the AL East Standings in Early June
It’s probably absurd. On the other hand, so is our electoral process, but we still vote.

That Line, From Where It’s Stolen
David Mamet’s film State and Main. Clip:

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

Other Notable Games
San Francisco at San Diego | 18:35 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Survival Tip: avoid suggesting to any Giants fan that Madison Bumgarner (74.0 IP, 91 xFIP-, 1.4 WAR) — who pitches today for San Francisco — is something less than an ace. Unless you have nunchucks, I guess — in which case, do whatever the eff you want.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio.

New York NL at Washington | 19:05 ET
Right-hander Jeremy Hefner, 26, starts for the Mets. He’s actually been pretty effective. To wit: 17.2 IP, 15.8% K, 1.3% BB, 45.9% GB, 3.29 SIERA, 87 xFIP-, 0.4 WAR.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

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 5.4.

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
Mad. Bumgarner	SF	8	4	5	5	4	SD	Clayton Richard	18:35
Jeanmar Gomez	CLE	2	4	6	4	10	DET	Max Scherzer	19:05
Chris Capuano	LAN	5	5	4	4	3	PHI	Kyle Kendrick	19:05
Jeremy Hefner*	NYN	8	1	7	5	7	WAS	Edwin Jackson	19:05
Alex Cobb*	TB	7	6	8	6	7	NYA	Ivan Nova	19:05
Randall Delgado	ATL	4	7	7	4	7	MIA	Josh Johnson	19:10
Wei-Yin Chen	BAL	3	5	6	5	6	BOS	Josh Beckett	19:10
Brad Lincoln	PIT	5	2	4	4	5	CIN	Johnny Cueto	19:10
Adam Wainwright	STL	7	10	7	5	6	HOU	Bud Norris	20:05
Paul Maholm	CHN	2	3	4	6	10	MIL	Zack Greinke	20:10
Nick Blackburn	MIN	2	3	3	6	7	KC	Felipe Paulino	20:10
Brandon Morrow	TOR	6	6	6	6	5	CHA	Jose Quintana*	20:10
Josh Outman*	COL	7	9	6	4	4	AZ	Wade Miley	21:40
Hector Noesi	SEA	4	5	5	2	5	LAA	Jerome Williams	22:05
Colby Lewis	TEX	5	10	3	2	3	OAK	Bartolo Colon	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.