NERD Game Scores for Monday, September 15, 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.

Most Highly Rated Game
Seattle at Los Angeles AL | 22:05 ET
Hisashi Iwakuma (165.0 IP, 75 xFIP-, 3.3 WAR) faces Matt Shoemaker (128.1 IP, 87 xFIP-, 1.9 WAR). While this game actually scores lower than San Francisco-Arizona on decimal points according to NERD, that proprietary and flawed metric fails to account for two non-negligible points, both of which concern the person of Matt Shoemaker. First is this: Shoemaker has unexpectedly emerged as probably the best starter on what is almost certainly the best team in the majors, rendering him, by some manner of transitive property, one of the best pitchers in all the leagues. And second is this: in Hisashi Iwakuma, Shoemaker faces one of three pitchers to whom he’s most comparable in the majors, all of whom (one notes) hail from a certain island nation in East Asia.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles AL Radio.

A Lone, Brief Note
Regarding Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features Miami at New York NL, starts at 7:10pm 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
Marcus Stroman	TOR	10	4	5	4	6	BAL	Wei-Yin Chen	19:05
Jarred Cosart	MIA	5	4	5	3	10	NYN	Jacob deGrom	19:10
Chris Capuano	NYA	7	3	4	4	6	TB	Alex Colome*	19:10
St. Strasburg	WAS	10	4	6	4	8	ATL	Ervin Santana	19:10
Alfredo Simon	CIN	6	3	4	4	3	CHN	Travis Wood	20:05
John Danks	CHA	4	3	6	10	7	KC	James Shields	20:10
Zach McAllister	CLE	6	4	5	4	8	HOU	Collin McHugh	20:10
Max Scherzer	DET	9	6	6	4	5	MIN	Ant’ny Swarzak*	20:10
Rob’o Hernandez	LAN	2	4	3	4	2	COL	Chris. Bergman	20:40
Ryan Vogelsong	SF	4	10	6	3	8	AZ	Wade Miley	21:40
Hisashi Iwakuma	SEA	9	6	6	4	8	LAA	Matt Shoemaker	22:05
Jerome Williams	PHI	4	3	4	3	9	SD	Andrew Cashner	22:10

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