NERD Game Scores: A Brief Exercise in Human Fallibility

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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
Washington at Pittsburgh | 19:05 ET
Scherzer (138.0 IP, 76 xFIP-) vs. Locke (103.1 IP, 103 xFIP-)
One finds, not infrequently — within the help-wanted section of his local daily — one finds calls from area employers for a sort of job applicant who possesses what is best described as an “attention to detail.” Indeed, as of Thursday night in America, no fewer than 51 of the classified ads in the Concord Monitor — i.e. the newspaper published most closely to the author’s birth home — no fewer than 51 ads featured that precise arrangement of words.

Of note with regard to the sort of jobs that require an “attention to detail” is that the present author has never, ever been offered one of them. Indeed, rather than detail, the author’s attention is turned much frequently in the direction of things like wine in a box, for example, or like internet comedy videos.

It was probably in the author’s haste to direct his attention towards those latter things that I neglected yesterday, while preparing to introduce a slight alteration to the NERD team-score algorithm, that I neglected to include the proper cell range in a VLOOKUP function which returned each club’s divisional-series playoff odds. As a result, a number of clubs were assessed playoff odds of 0%. As a result of that, their NERD scores were distorted badly.

What I’ve done in the meantime, then, is to correct the great cell-range debacle and to update the team scores duly. Here, by way of illustration, are all the clubs to receive a a NERD of 7 or greater either by the distorted version published yesterday or the corrected one today:

One notes that a number of the scores for American League clubs have increased by two or three points. Unsurprisingly, these were the same clubs accidentally omitted from the aforementioned cell range. What one notes beyond that is the substantial volume of energy invested by the author in this overwhelmingly unimportant endeavor — an endeavor monitored by only a handful of people, it should be said, each of whom is also probably marveling at the curious use of his or her finite time among the living. And yet, what one thirdly notes is that the alternatives aren’t manifestly better and that diverting oneself briefly from the spectre of mortality perhaps actually does represent a rational use of one’s resources.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington Radio.

One Other Brief Note
Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features Atlanta at St. Louis, starts at 20:15 ET, and can be accessed by means of this hyperlinked text.

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 the calculations both for team and game NERD scores have changed recently to better integrate playoff odds into same. Read more about those changes here, if you’re the sort of person accustomed to making poor life decisions.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Jerome Williams	PHI	4	2	4	6	6	CHN	Jon Lester	16:05
Max Scherzer	WAS	10	7	8	8	5	PIT	Jeff Locke	19:05
Chris Tillman	BAL	3	6	5	3	10	TB	Chris Archer	19:10
Jose Quintana	CHA	7	1	6	5	10	CLE	Corey Kluber	19:10
Justin Verlander	DET	2	3	3	3	5	BOS	Rick Porcello	19:10
Ian Thomas*	LAN	4	7	5	6	4	NYN	Jon Niese	19:10
Scott Kazmir	HOU	6	10	6	5	3	KC	Jeremy Guthrie	20:10
Michael Pineda	NYA	10	8	6	4	4	MIN	Phil Hughes	20:10
Manny Banuelos	ATL	2	3	3	4	4	STL	Tim Cooney	20:15
Ant. DeSclafani	CIN	4	4	3	4	1	COL	Eddie Butler	20:40
Jimmy Nelson	MIL	6	3	5	5	8	AZ	Patrick Corbin	21:40
Colby Lewis	TEX	3	3	5	7	5	LAA	Undecided	22:05
Dan Haren	MIA	3	5	4	3	7	SD	Andrew Cashner	22:10
Drew Hutchison	TOR	7	10	7	3	7	SEA	Felix Hernandez	22:10
Jesse Chavez	OAK	5	4	5	8	2	SF	Jake Peavy	22:15

* = Fewer than 10 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.