NERD Game Scores for Friday, September 02, 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
Toronto at Tampa Bay | 19:10 ET
Stroman (167.0 IP, 78 xFIP-) vs. Cobb (Season Debut)
Last year, Toronto starting pitchers combined to produce a collective 10.9 WAR. This year, with roughly a month remaining in the season, they’ve already surpassed that mark, having recorded 12.3 WAR as a group entering play today. Naturally, Aaron Sanchez (3.7 WAR) and J.A. Happ (2.7 WAR) have been central to that effort — and have produced numbers roughly equivalent to Stroman’s own 3.0 mark. Normalize for the vagaries of home-run allowance, however, and Stroman not only represents the best pitcher on his own club, but the third-best starter among all major-league qualifiers. Translating that to run-prevention would benefit the Blue Jays greatly, which club currently faces among the least certain postseason scenarios in the majors.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

Two Other Brief Notes
Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features the same Toronto at Tampa Bay clubs cited above and can be accessed by means of this hyperlinked text.

On NERD’s Playoff Adjustment and the Cubs
As the season wears on, the algorithm for game NERD scores weights team scores progressively more heavily and pitcher scores less heavily — to account for the greater influence of a team’s posteason chances on the watchability of their games. Also as the season progresses, the algorithm for those team NERD scores weights various performance factors (weighted batting, adjusted home-run rate) less heavily and playoff odds more heavily.

The idea of the postseason adjustment is to assess higher NERD scores to clubs which feature less certainty regarding the postseason. To accomplish this, the author begins with the divisional odds and wild-card odds and finds the absolute value of each number minus 0.5 (or, 50%). I then add the results together divide by two. Then I subtract the result of that figure from 0.5 and multiply the resulting number by 20. Finally, I normalize all the scores to create a league average of 5.0.

Here’s all of that using the Chicago Cubs as an example. The Cubs have divisional and wild-card odds of 100.0% and 0.0%, respectively, using the site’s “coin flip” methodology (which seems to best represent how the human mind conceives of postseason odds).

• [ |1.000 – 0.5| + |0.000 – 0.5| ] / 2 = 0.500
• (0.5 – 0.500) * 20 = 0.0

That 0.0 number is the postseason adjustment just before it’s normalized to create a league average of 5.0. The raw league average right now is 1.88. So, to find the Cubs’ score we subtract that figure from 5.0 and add the difference to the Cubs’ raw score.

So:

• 0.0 + (5.0 – 1.88) = 3.1

That 3.1 represents Chicago’s current playoff adjustment — a figure to which the team’s NERD score will gravitate continuously as the season continues. It’s also the lowest possible score a club can receive at the moment, one shared only by very poor clubs that have been effectively (or literally) eliminated from postseason contention. Because, like those clubs, the Cubs aren’t playing games of any great consequence at the moment. Playing in a division where it appears as though 87 wins would be sufficient to claim that division, the Cubs have already recorded 86 wins. They could lose all but two games for the rest of the season, in other words, and still win the Central.

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.