Daily Notes, With Some Potent Minor-League News

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

1. Potent Minor-League News
2. Notable MLB Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Potent Minor-League News
Featuring entirely — perhaps even excessively — fertile news.

Ynoa Pitches 10th Professional Inning
Ben Badler of Baseball America tweets — and is not lying when he notes — that Michael Ynoa, the recipient of a $4.25 million bonus out of the Dominican in 2008 (the largest such bonus for a Latin American amateur at the time), pitched his first competitive inning of the season on Saturday and his 10th as a professional. Here’s (the now 20-year-old) Ynoa’s line from his appearance with the rookie-level AZL Athletics: 1.0 IP, 4 TBF, 1 K, 1 BB, 0 H.

Skaggs Makes Triple-A Debut
Left-hander Tyler Skaggs, ranked 11th among all prospects by our Marc Hulet this preseason, made his Triple-A debut on Sunday, reports Andrew Pentis of MiLB.com. Here’s his line from the start in question: 7.0 IP, 31 TBF, 3 K, 1 BB, 2 HR, 12 H, 9:3 GO:AO. And here’s his line from Double-A Mobile: 69.2 IP, 9.17 K/9, 2.71 BB/9, 1.03 HR/9, 3.60 FIP.

Sheets Signed by Atlanta, Assigned to Double-A Mississippi
The Atlanta Braves signed right-hander Ben Sheets, now 33, to a minor-league deal on Sunday, reports George Henry of the Associated Press. Sheets last pitched for Oakland in 2010, posting this line: 119.1 IP, 16.4% K, 8.4% BB, 44.4% GB, 4.40 SIERA, 102 xFIP-, 0.6 WAR. He had a bananas year in 2004, when he did this: 237.0 IP, 28.2% K, 3.4% BB, 43.3% GB, 2.67 SIERA, 62 xFIP-, 8.0 WAR. After making love to the internet briefly, one finds that, since 2002, Sheets’ WAR from 2004 is the 10th-best season by that measure (among pitchers); his xFIP-, the fifth-best.

Notable MLB Games
Colorado at St. Louis | 20:15 ET
The brazen reader will likely wonder such things as “How the frig could the Rockies have a 10 NERD.” And: “How the frig could Josh Outman have a NERD of 9?” The brazen reader will likely — immediately after wondering such things — render them into electronic print in the comments area of a post much like this one, perhaps attaching some uncomplimentary epithets to the name of the author and/or his made-up stat. What precisely will he say? I don’t know, but the suspense is killing me.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.

Baltimore at Seattle | 22:10 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Of note: Japanese right-hander Hisashi Iwakuma, 31, makes his first major-league start tonight after 14 relief appearances with Seattle. His line so far: 30.1 IP, 18.1% K, 11.8% BB, 56.3% GB, 4.04 SIERA, 102 xFIP-, -0.4 WAR.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Baltimore 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 4.8.

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
Jered Weaver	LAA	4	5	3	4	0	CLE	Ubaldo Jimenez	19:05
Jordan Lyles	HOU	3	5	4	3	6	PIT	James McDonald	19:05
Liam Hendriks	MIN	5	3	5	4	7	DET	Doug Fister	19:05
Everett Teaford*	KC	3	5	3	7	2	TOR	Ricky Romero	19:07
Jeff Samardzija	CHN	9	3	6	7	4	ATL	Tommy Hanson	19:10
Freddy Garcia	NYA	5	6	5	4	7	TB	Matt Moore	19:10
Carlos Zambrano	MIA	2	2	4	7	9	MIL	Zack Greinke	20:10
Josh Outman	COL	9	10	7	9	4	STL	Kyle Lohse	20:15
Clayton Richard	SD	5	5	5	6	5	AZ	Trevor Cahill	21:40
D. Matsuzaka	BOS	6	6	5	4	4	OAK	Jarrod Parker	22:05
Jason Hammel	BAL	8	3	5	3	6	SEA	Hisashi Iwakuma*	22:10
Homer Bailey	CIN	4	3	5	2	6	LAN	Chad Billingsley	22:10

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.