NERD Game Scores for Sunday, September 13, 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
Houston at Los Angeles AL | 15:35 ET
Fiers (155.0 IP, 103 xFIP-) vs. Heaney (84.1 IP, 105 xFIP-)
This game represents an opportunity not only to survey, in Houston, a club currently involved in the league’s tightest divisional race — not only that, but also the first occasion on which to observe Angels left-hander Andrew Heaney since he became the first major leaguer to offer publicly a chance to invest in his success. Following an agreement with Fantex, Heaney will receive “$3.34 million in exchange for 10 percent of all future earnings,” according to Ken Rosenthal. Whether the same opportunity will be made available for major-league webloggers, the company remains not so much quiet as they don’t ever return your phone calls even though you left probably seven or ten messages on their voicemail last week and sent several emails with the word “Urgent” in the subject.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston Television.

Another Brief Note
Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features Detroit at Cleveland, starts at 13:10 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 adjustments here and here.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
R.A. Dickey	TOR	8	6	7	6	8	NYA	Masahiro Tanaka	13:05
Rich Hill*	BOS	8	4	5	4	8	TB	Drew Smyly	13:10
Justin Verlander	DET	4	4	5	5	5	CLE	Trevor Bauer	13:10
Randy Wolf	DET	3	4	5	5	10	CLE	Carlos Carrasco	TBD
Michael Wacha	STL	8	8	7	4	10	CIN	Raisel Iglesias	13:10
Max Scherzer	WAS	10	4	5	4	4	MIA	Brad Hand	13:10
Dan Haren	CHN	3	5	4	3	2	PHI	Aaron Harang	13:35
Taylor Jungmann	MIL	4	4	6	8	8	PIT	Francisco Liriano	13:35
Jon Niese	NYN	5	4	4	4	6	ATL	Ryan Weber*	13:35
Kyle Gibson	MIN	4	7	6	4	10	CHA	Chris Sale	14:10
Felix Doubront	OAK	4	4	6	9	3	TEX	Alex Gonzalez	15:05
Mike Fiers	HOU	3	10	7	6	5	LAA	Andrew Heaney	15:35
Od. Despaigne	SD	4	4	4	4	6	SF	Mike Leake	16:05
Kyle Kendrick	COL	0	4	4	4	5	SEA	James Paxton	16:10
Zack Greinke	LAN	7	4	5	4	8	AZ	Patrick Corbin	16:10
Johnny Cueto	KC	7	4	5	4	5	BAL	Wei-Yin Chen	20:05

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