NERD Game Scores for Monday, June 22, 2015

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
Los Angeles NL at Chicago NL | 20:05 ET
Kershaw (93.0 IP, 57 xFIP-) vs. Wada (29.1 IP, 94 xFIP-)
In his collection of aphorisms The Trouble with Being Born, the spiritually embattled and now also dead Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran writes “The more gifted a man is, the less progress he makes on the spiritual level. Talent is an obstacle to the inner life.” Granting, for a moment, the truth of Cioran’s utterance, one is compelled to reason that left-hander Clayton Kershaw lacks much in the way of said inner life — owing, that is, to the flagrancy of his talents. This season, for example, he’s produced thus far both the highest swinging-strike and also overall strikeout rate of his career. Also, somehow, his average fastball velocity remains largely identical to the figures he recorded over each of the past seven years — this, despite the fact that pitchers as a population tend to lose about 0.3 to 0.5 mph each year. Empty, is what he must be on the inside. Empty and hollow. Like a big human kettledrum.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Chicago NL Television.

A Single, Brief Note
Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features Detroit at Cleveland, starts at 19:10 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
Kevin Correia	PHI	6	1	6	8	10	NYA	Michael Pineda	19:05
Kyle Ryan	DET	7	4	6	7	5	CLE	Trevor Bauer	19:10
Drew Hutchison	TOR	7	8	6	6	5	TB	Matt Andriese	19:10
Clayton Kershaw	LAN	10	6	7	7	4	CHN	Tsuyoshi Wada	20:05
John Danks	CHA	4	1	3	3	2	MIN	Tommy Milone	20:10
Br. Oberholtzer	HOU	3	10	5	6	3	LAA	Hector Santiago	22:05
Joe Blanton*	KC	6	8	6	4	7	SEA	Felix Hernandez	22:10

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