NERD Game Scores for Monday, May 26, 2014

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.

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Most Highly Rated Game
New York AL at St. Louis | 16:15 ET
Chase Whitley (9.0 IP, 95 xFIP-, 0.3 WAR) faces Michael Wacha (60.1 IP, 81 xFIP-, 1.3 WAR). With regard to the latter, former and beloved contributor to these pages Mike Axisa — who, it should be said, knows from freaky — makes the following internet observation:

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Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.

Two Brief Notes
Regarding Buchholz, His Fastball Velocity
Boston right-hander Clay Buchholz produced an average fastball velocity of 90.2 mph over this first four starts. In his five most recent starts, that figure is over a mph faster. His xFIP over those first four starts: 3.44. His xFIP since: quite worse, actually.

Regarding Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game hadn’t been announced as of press time, but 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.

NERD Image 3

Away   SP Tm. Gm. Tm. SP   Home Time
Clay Buchholz BOS 3 2 5 7 8 ATL Ervin Santana 13:10
Bran. Cumpton* PIT 6 7 6 3 7 NYN Jacob Degrom* 13:10
Nathan Eovaldi MIA 9 9 7 6 4 WAS Tanner Roark 13:35
Chris Tillman BAL 3 4 4 5 5 MIL Kyle Lohse 14:10
Josh Tomlin* CLE 5 5 5 3 6 CHA Jose Quintana 14:10
Nick Tepesch* TEX 6 2 3 4 0 MIN Kevin Correia 14:10
Jeff Samardzija CHN 6 5 6 6 6 SF Yusmeiro Petit* 16:05
Drew Smyly DET 5 5 4 5 1 OAK Tommy Milone 16:05
Tyler Skaggs LAA 6 9 4 4 0 SEA Chris Young 16:10
Chase Whitley* NYA 8 5 8 3 10 STL Michael Wacha 16:15
Jhoulys Chacin COL 1 8 2 2 2 PHI Kyle Kendrick 17:05
Erik Bedard TB 0 5 4 7 7 TOR Drew Hutchison 19:07
Johnny Cueto CIN 9 3 7 6 6 LAN Hyun-Jin Ryu 20:10
Scott Feldman HOU 1 7 5 3 10 KC Yordano Ventura 20:10
Tyson Ross SD 7 6 7 5 9 AZ Brandon McCarthy 20:10

To learn how Game NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.





Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.

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Well-Beered Englishman
11 years ago

Cool Name Game of the Day

Jeff Samardzija faces Yusmeiro Petit in a matchup that also features Darwin Barney, Buster Posey, Ehire Adrianza, and Angel Pagan, although tragically is lacking Cubs prospect Arismendy Alcantara.

Historical Geekery Nickname of the Day

We are glad to welcome back to the majors Nick “the Impaler” Tepesch.

Authorly Note

Don’t expect this every day. We’re having a lazy weekend.

Rrr
11 years ago

jhoulys deserves a 10 for that name alone.