NERD Game Scores for Saturday, September 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
San Francisco at Chicago NL | 14:20 ET
Bumgarner (187.2 IP, 86 xFIP-) vs. Arrieta (168.0 IP, 89 xFIP-)
The present author repeats this sentiment below in a tortuous explanation of NERD’s playoff adjustment, but it merits some brief consideration here, as well: per FanGraphs’ playoff odds, the Cubs have now recorded more wins than the Central division’s next-best club, St. Louis, is projected to record by the end of the season.

Regard that same sentiment, in lightly photoshopped form:

What this means is that, as of now, it would be possible for the Cubs to lose all the rest of their games and still likely win the Central division.

As for their opponent today, San Francisco, they currently occupy a very different place: where the Cubs’ near future is more or less settled, the Giants’ is opaque. Whatever methodology one references, the Giants feature roughly an equal chance of winning the division as merely qualifying for a wild-card spot as doing neither.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

Two Other Brief Notes
Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features Miami at Cleveland, starts at 19:10 ET, 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 1.93. 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 – 1.93) = 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 86 wins would be sufficient to claim that division, the Cubs have already recorded 87 wins. Which means — as the author notes above — that they could lose every game for the rest of the season and still probably 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.