Daily Notes, With an Impressive Sequence by Darvish

September 21, 2012

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

1. Footage: An Impressive Sequence by Darvish
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Footage: An Impressive Sequence by Darvish
The Situation
During Thursday night’s Rangers-Angels game (box), with the Rangers leading by one in the fifth inning, Yu Darvish fell behind Howie Kendrick to a 3-1 count.

An Average Pitcher, What He’d Likely Do
In this instance, an average pitcher would likely throw a fastball — or, if not on 3-1, would likely throw one on 3-2.

What Yu Darvish Endeavored to Do
With the count 3-1 against Kendrick, threw a 90 mph cutter, inducing a swing and miss:

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And Then What He Did After That
After inducing that swing and miss, Darvish threw a slider — a pitch not entirely dissimilar from the cutter in terms of shape — at 80 mph off the outside corner, inducing a second consecutive swing and miss:

Reaction to This, The Proper One
Vigorous applause, one assumes. Triumphal marches, perhaps. The brief suspension of life’s worries, certainly.

Today’s Notable Games
St. Louis at Chicago NL | 14:20 ET
Right-hander Chris Carpenter makes his season debut for a St. Louis team currently 2.5 games clear of Milwaukee for the second wild-card spot. Of note: Carpenter has made no rehab starts, per se, instead throwing a series of simulated games to rebuild his arm strength and stamina.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis or Chicago NL Radio.

Minnesota at Detroit | 19:05 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Earlier this week our Michael Barr advised Rick Porcello (167.1 IP, 93 xFIP-, 2.9 WAR), who starts tonight for the Tigers, to stop throwing his slider. Will Porcello, who is probably reading these words right now, listen? Waiting breathlessly is our only recourse at the moment.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Detroit.

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 4.0.

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
Chris Carpenter*	STL	10	8	5	2	3	CHN	Chris Volstad	14:20
Tommy Hanson	ATL	4	6	2	5	4	PHI	Kyle Kendrick	19:05
Shaun Marcum	MIL	5	10	6	7	8	WAS	Edwin Jackson	19:05
Samuel Deduno	MIN	1	4	4	4	7	DET	Rick Porcello	19:05
Jarrod Parker	OAK	6	6	6	7	9	NYA	CC Sabathia	19:05
Miguel Gonzalez	BAL	3	2	3	5	7	BOS	Jon Lester	19:10
Joe Blanton	LAN	8	1	3	4	4	CIN	Bronson Arroyo	19:10
Jacob Turner	MIA	5	4	3	2	7	NYN	Jon Niese	19:10
Carlos Villanueva	TOR	5	5	5	6	8	TB	James Shields	19:10
Jeff Locke*	PIT	8	4	5	3	7	HOU	Edgar Gonzalez*	20:05
Wade Miley	AZ	6	6	3	7	4	COL	Drew Pomeranz	20:10
Justin Masterson	CLE	5	2	2	8	3	KC	Luis Mendoza	20:10
Jake Peavy	CHA	6	4	5	8	3	LAA	Ervin Santana	22:05
Martin Perez*	TEX	7	7	4	4	5	SEA	Hisashi Iwakuma	22:10
Casey Kelly	SD	10	7	4	4	3	SF	Ryan Vogelsong	22:15

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.