Daily Notes, With No Little Attention to Dillon Gee

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

1. Featured Game: Milwaukee at New York NL, 19:10 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Largely Superfluous Video: Stephen Strasburg’s Last Start
4. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Milwaukee at New York NL, 19:10 ET
On What the Reader Might Be Wondering
The reader might be wondering why a contest involving Dillon Gee is this evening’s featured game — in particular, that is, because Cliff Lee and CC Sabathia and Stephen Strasburg are all pitching in other, not featured games.

On What the Author Is Responding
The author is responding, first of all, that Gee opposes Brewers right-hander Zack Greinke, who has been excellent this season (43.0 IP, 67 xFIP-, 1.7 WAR).

On What the Author Is Also Responding
The author is also responding that Gee himself has been quite good. Consider, if you have a moment, staring deep into his season line to date: 37.2 IP, 20.0% K, 4.9% BB, 52.2% GB, 3.15 SIERA, 83 xFIP-, 0.6 WAR.

Of Particular Note Regarding Dillon Gee
Of particular note regarding Dillon Gee is that he’s currently 11th (among 116 qualified starters) with an 11.0% swinging-strike rate — and, on a likely related note, is first in opponent O-Swing%, at 36.8%.

On What Makes Gee’s Success Maybe Surprising
What makes Gee’s success — both in terms of his defense-independent numbers and also his capacity for inducing swinging-stikes — what makes it maybe surprising is that his average fastball velocity is below 90 mph, nor has he ever been praised for his stuff, at all.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast
Per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project, FanGraphs readers prefer New York NL Television (link).

Other Notable Games
San Diego at Washington | 13:05 ET
In his most recent start, at Pittsburgh, Stephen Strasburg (who starts for Washington tonight) put up a single game FIP and xFIP of 0.15 and 0.38, respectively.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Diego.

Detroit at Chicago AL | 14:10 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Max Scherzer pitches for Detroit. Here’re his xFIP-s from 2009 to ’11, during which period he pitched at least 170 innings each season: 90, 88, 91. Now here’s his xFIP- so far this season: 89.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Detroit.

Largely Superfluous Video: Stephen Strasburg’s Last Start
Here, for no particular reason, is footage from Stephen Strasburg’s most recent start, May 10th at Pittsburgh:

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 5.2.

Regard, a magnificent and sortable table:

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Jordan Lyles*	HOU	5	6	7	3	10	PHI	Cliff Lee	13:05
Anthony Bass	SD	7	5	7	2	10	WAS	St. Strasburg	13:05
Derek Lowe	CLE	1	3	1	2	0	MIN	Jason Marquis	13:10
Paul Maholm	CHN	2	3	4	10	4	STL	Kyle Lohse	13:45
Max Scherzer	DET	8	2	6	4	6	CHA	Jake Peavy	14:10
Blake Beavan	SEA	2	4	4	6	5	BOS	Josh Beckett	16:05
CC Sabathia	NYA	10	7	7	6	3	BAL	Wei-Yin Chen	19:05
Bartolo Colon	OAK	3	4	3	2	4	LAA	Ervin Santana	19:05
David Price	TB	8	7	6	5	3	TOR	Hend. Alvarez	19:07
Johnny Cueto	CIN	5	4	6	8	7	ATL	Tim Hudson*	19:10
Zack Greinke	MIL	9	6	8	2	9	NYN	Dillon Gee	19:10
Kevin Correia	PIT	1	2	4	4	7	MIA	Josh Johnson	19:10
Vin Mazzaro*	KC	4	7	6	10	6	TEX	Colby Lewis	20:05
Wade Miley	AZ	4	6	5	6	4	LAN	Ch. Billingsley	22:10
Jeremy Guthrie	COL	0	8	4	3	7	SF	Tim Lincecum	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.