NERD Game Scores for Thursday, June 23, 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
Seattle at Detroit | 13:10 ET
Sampson (4.2 IP, 112 xFIP-) vs. Norris (1.0 IP, 225 xFIP-)
The idea that being handed lemons by Life — the idea that this somehow represents an undesirable state of affairs — is a bit perplexing for those among us who’ve been compelled actually to pay for lemons at a grocery. Nearly as perplexing as the suggestion that, once having been supplied with all these lemons, that one ought immediately to run out and go make lemonade. Because consider: lemons are present in a number of pesto recipes. And serve as a nice complement to broiled fish. Nor does this even credit the many uses of lemon zest. Lemonade, whatever its merits, doesn’t come close to representing the fully actualized state of the lemon.

Today’s baseball schedule has handed the reader metaphorical lemons. There are fewer games than usual and a paucity of elite starters. But this oughtn’t prevent one from extracting pleasure from it. The best use of the day, perhaps? To play the role of impostor-scout and carefully observe the starts of Seattle’s Adrian Sampson and Detroit’s Daniel Norris, neither of whom has recorded even as much as five innings in the majors this season.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Detroit Radio.

Two Other Brief Notes
Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features Philadelphia at Minnesota, starts at 13:10 ET, and can be accessed by means of this hyperlinked text.

Broadcaster Rankings
Recently, the present author facilitated a crowdsourcing effort to reproduce the broadcaster rankings which appeared on this site roughly four years ago. The results from that effort are published here in one easily digestible post.

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 23, 2016

Away		SP	TM	GM	TM	SP		Home	Time
Albert Suarez	SF	4	6	5	5	5	PIT	Jon Niese	12:35
Jerad Eickhoff	PHI	6	2	5	4	7	MIN	Ricky Nolasco	13:10
Adrian Sampson*	SEA	6	5	6	5	7	DET	Daniel Norris*	13:10
James Shields	CHA	2	3	4	8	5	BOS	Rick Porcello	13:35
Jon Lester	CHN	6	6	6	6	5	MIA	Wei-Yin Chen	19:10
Matt Harvey	NYN	8	6	5	1	4	ATL	Matt Wisler	19:10
Christian Friedrich	SD	2	4	3	3	2	CIN	John Lamb	19:10
Zack Greinke	AZ	5	6	5	4	5	COL	Eddie Butler	20:40
Kendall Graveman	OAK	5	4	5	3	6	LAA	Tim Lincecum*	22:05

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.