Daily Notes, With an Amendment to Friday’s Notes

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

1. An Amendment to Friday’s Notes in re Curveballs and Movement
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

An Amendment to Friday’s Notes in re Curveballs and Movement
What the Author Is Amending
In yesterday’s edition of the Notes, the author presented a table of what he called — in a flaccid attempt to be amusing, no doubt — what he called the “movingest” curveballs in the major leagues this year. To find the total movement of the the league’s curveballs, however, the author merely added the absolute value of every pitcher’s average horizontal movement on the curveball to the absolute value of the vertical movement of his curveball.

How the Author Should Have Found Total Movement, Probably
In point of fact, the author probably should have found the square root of the sum of the squared horizontal and vertical measurements — as humans have been doing for ca. 2500 years, that is.

Regarding This Oversight, To Whom the Author Apologizes About It
The author apologizes to the readership for this oversight, to Kyle Weiland (whose curveball displaces Brett Myers’s atop the leaderboard), and to Pythagoras of Samos.

Revised Table
Below are the pitchers with the greatest total movement on their curveballs — measured as noted above — who’ve also thrown the pitch at least 5% of the time. (Note: movement numbers are in inches, relative to a spinless ball.)

Name	Team	TBF	% Thrown	LWTS/100	Velo	Hor.	Vert.	Pyth
Kyle Weiland	Astros	79	10.2%	1.44	76.6	11.6	-8.4	14.3
Brett Myers	– – –	162	29.9%	0.93	76.9	9.6	-10.5	14.2
Mike Fiers	Brewers	318	18.9%	1.42	71.6	4.4	-13.0	13.7
Adam Wainwright	Cardinals	576	23.9%	1.26	73.5	8.9	-9.9	13.3
Evan Scribner	Athletics	66	32.4%	-0.76	72.3	8.2	-10.4	13.2
Alex Cobb	Rays	353	15.3%	-1.34	78.0	7.4	-10.7	13.0
Dillon Gee	Mets	463	12.4%	-0.18	73.8	9.3	-8.7	12.7
Yoshinori Tateyama	Rangers	62	28.0%	-0.55	70.7	12.5	-2.4	12.7
Justin Germano	– – –	77	25.5%	4.11	70.6	6.4	-10.8	12.6
Miles Mikolas	Padres	73	30.9%	-1.71	76.6	7.7	-9.9	12.5

Revised Footage
This is Kyle Weiland, and not Brett Myers, throwing a curveball — specifically, a curveball with 10.8 inches of gloveside movement and 10.3 inches of “drop,” for a total of 14.9 inches of movement (numbers courtesy Brooks Baseball).

Revised Slow-Motion Footage
This is Kyle Weiland throwing the same pitch as above, just a little slower.

Revised and Complete Results
Click this hyperlinked text to see the complete results for pitcher curveball movement.

Today’s Notable Games
Oakland at Chicago AL | 19:10 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Three right-handed batters Francisco Liriano (111.0 IP, 95 xFIP-, 1.5 WAR) will likely face tonight, their numbers over the last month:

• Chris Carter: 98 PA, .247/.408/.558 (.261 BABIP), 164 wRC+
• Yoenis Cespedes: 105 PA, .400/.457/.621 (.471 BABIP), 201 wRC+
• Jonny Gomes: 66 PA, .321/.424/.554 (.389 BABIP), 174 wRC+

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Oakland Radio.

Detroit at Texas | 20:05 ET
Overall playoff odds, per Cool Standings: Detroit, 62.7%; Texas, 90.2%. Odds of winning division: Detroit, 39.4%; Texas, 70.0%.

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 4.7.

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
Ivan Nova	NYA	7	6	3	6	3	TOR	Aaron Laffey	13:07
Bronson Arroyo	CIN	4	4	1	0	2	CHN	Travis Wood	16:05
Drew Pomeranz	COL	4	8	5	4	7	SF	Matt Cain	16:05
Franklin Morales	BOS	7	6	5	4	7	CLE	Zach McAllister	18:05
Luis Mendoza	KC	3	7	3	1	5	BAL	Chris Tillman	19:05
Marco Estrada	MIL	8	8	3	4	0	HOU	Dallas Keuchel	19:05
Jason Marquis	SD	5	6	5	5	7	PIT	A.J. Burnett	19:05
Jake Westbrook	STL	6	10	7	6	9	PHI	Cliff Lee	19:05
Kris Medlen*	ATL	7	7	5	3	6	NYN	Johan Santana	19:10
Joe Blanton	LAN	8	1	5	3	4	MIA	Ricky Nolasco	19:10
Travis Blackley	OAK	4	6	5	4	7	CHA	Francis. Liriano	19:10
David Price	TB	10	4	5	3	1	MIN	Nick Blackburn	19:10
Justin Verlander	DET	10	5	7	8	5	TEX	Derek Holland	20:05
Edwin Jackson	WAS	6	5	6	7	7	AZ	Wade Miley	20:10
Hisashi Iwakuma	SEA	5	3	5	7	5	LAA	Dan Haren	21:05

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.