NERD Game Scores for Friday, June 03, 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
Seattle at Texas | 20:05 ET
Walker (54.1 IP, 90 xFIP-) vs. Darvish (5.0 IP, 38 xFIP-)
Darvish returned this past Saturday from a Tommy John procedure and the subsequent rehab, recording his first major-league appearance since August of 2014. The results were almost embarrassingly positive. The right-hander produced a 7:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio against just 19 batters over 5.0 innings while also posting an average fastball velocity more than 1 mph harder than his previously established levels. With a view towards best representing the sort of pleasures facilitated by Yu Darvish, the remainder of this brief entry will be delivered by means of video footage — a medium the reader will recognize as easier to consume and largely better than dumb words.

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: Seattle.

Two Other Brief Notes
Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features San Francisco at St. Louis, starts at 20:15 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 — for television broadcasts, at least — are available 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 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.

NERD Scores for June 03, 2016

Away		SP	TM	GM	TM	SP		Home	Time
Archie Bradley	AZ	6	6	7	7	7	CHN	John Lackey	14:20
Jered Weaver	LAA	2	2	3	5	4	PIT	Francisco Liriano	19:05
Jimmy Nelson	MIL	3	5	5	2	8	PHI	Vincent Velasquez	19:05
Nathan Eovaldi	NYA	10	4	6	6	3	BAL	Chris Tillman	19:05
Carlos Rodon	CHA	7	3	5	4	5	DET	Jordan Zimmermann	19:10
Edinson Volquez	KC	4	5	6	6	8	CLE	Danny Salazar	19:10
Noah Syndergaard	NYN	10	6	5	5	0	MIA	Tom Koehler	19:10
R.A. Dickey	TOR	10	4	8	8	8	BOS	David Price	19:10
Gio Gonzalez	WAS	4	7	4	4	2	CIN	Brandon Finnegan	19:10
Taijuan Walker	SEA	9	7	8	5	10	TEX	Yu Darvish*	20:05
Jesse Hahn	OAK	4	4	4	7	3	HOU	Doug Fister	20:10
Jake Odorizzi	TB	4	7	6	6	6	MIN	Ricky Nolasco	20:10
Johnny Cueto	SF	7	4	5	6	4	STL	Adam Wainwright	20:15
Julio Teheran	ATL	4	1	4	5	5	LAN	Kenta Maeda	22:10
Chris Rusin	COL	6	4	6	6	6	SD	Drew Pomeranz	20:40

SP denotes pitcher NERD score.
TM denotes team score.
GM denotes overall game score.
Highlighted portion denotes game of the day.

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