NERD Game Scores for Thursday, June 09, 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
Cleveland at Seattle | 22:10 ET
Tomlin (61.0 IP, 101 xFIP-) vs. Karns (61.2 IP, 95 xFIP-)
Cleveland last appeared in a proper postseason series in 2007; Seattle, in 2001. Currently, the clubs possess a 69% and 45% probability, respectively, of qualifying for the divisional series. The odds, then, of one or the other of them ending their plaoyff drought would appear strong. Much better than the reader’s odds, certainly, of escaping the darkness that devours us all.

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: Seattle.

Two Other Brief Notes
Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features Pittsburgh at Colorado, starts at 17:10 ET, and can be accessed by means of this hyperlinked text.

Broadcaster Rankings
Recently, the author published the results of a crowdsourcing effort to rank the league’s television broadcasts according to the tastes of this site’s readers. The second installment of the results for radio broadcasters appeared here Tuesday. The final installment is scheduled to appear today.

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.

NERD Scores for June 09, 2016

Away		SP	TM	GM	TM	SP		Home	Time
Collin McHugh	HOU	6	7	5	5	4	TEX	Martin Perez	14:05
Jeff Locke	PIT	2	6	4	3	5	COL	Chad Bettis	17:10
Jhoulys Chacin	LAA	6	2	5	4	6	NYA	Ivan Nova	19:05
Tyler Wilson	BAL	3	7	6	4	8	TOR	Marcus Stroman	19:07
Adam Wainwright	STL	4	6	4	3	3	CIN	Brandon Finnegan	19:10
Tom Koehler	MIA	1	5	4	6	4	MIN	Ervin Santana	20:10
Bartolo Colon	NYN	4	6	4	5	3	MIL	Jimmy Nelson	20:10
Gio Gonzalez	WAS	5	7	4	3	3	CHA	Miguel Gonzalez	20:10
Josh Tomlin	CLE	5	7	6	6	5	SEA	Nate Karns	22:10

SP denotes pitcher NERD score.
TM denotes team score.
GM denotes overall game score.
Highlighted portion denotes game of the day.

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