NERD Game Scores for Monday, July 04, 2016

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Detroit at Cleveland | 19:10 ET
Norris (11.0 IP, 92 xFIP-) vs. Salazar (93.1 IP, 87 xFIP-)
The deeply flawed game NERD scores created by the author are, by definition, flawed deeply. That said, they do include at least one element that isn’t entirely senseless — namely that, as the season wears on, they’re influenced more significantly by the team scores and less by the starting-pitcher scores. And the team scores themselves are influenced more significantly by postseason odds and less by performance-related factors. This is relevant today because (a) Cleveland currently possesses the league’s highest team score (tied with Baltimore) and (b) just over 50% of the season’s games have been played. It’s likely, in other words, that their games will be well-acquitted here for the time being. Which appears to have some sense to it: they’re a strong club in the thick of a division race. In conclusion, this has been a paragraph of no importance.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Detroit Radio.

Two Other Brief Notes
Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features Seattle at Houston, starts at 14:10 ET, and can be accessed by means of this hyperlinked text.

Broadcaster Rankings
Recently, the present author facilitated a crowdsourcing effort to reproduce the broadcaster rankings which appeared on this site roughly four years ago. The results from that effort are published here in one easily digestible post.

Complete Schedule
Here’s the complete and very sortable table for all of today’s games. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and also the rest of the internet. Note that calculations both for team and game NERD scores feature adjustment for postseason odds that increases as season progresses. Read more about those adjustments here and here.