NERD Game Scores for Thursday, May 21, 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
Los Angeles NL at San Francisco | 15:45 ET
Kershaw (51.0 IP, 57 xFIP-) vs. Bumgarner (50.2 IP, 93 xFIP-)
The reader might regard it as an instance of “beating a dead horse” to suggest that a combination of Madison Bumgarner, Clayton Kershaw, and their respective California-based franchises — to suggest that all of it, together, conspires to produce a compelling spectacle. The author contends, however, that it’s nothing at all like beating a dead horse. On the contrary: while the encounter between Bumgarner and Kershaw is likely to produce considerable pleasure, the prospect of beating horses — dead or alive, really — skews decidedly more to the horrifying side of things. Indeed, a little research reveals that today’s psychiatric wards are occupied almost exclusively by people who were traumatized after witnessing the merciless assault of a horse. Really, the author’s suggestion regarding Bumgarner and Kershaw, etc., rather than the beating of an equine, bears much more resemblance to sitting in a massage chair at an area Sharper Image location, in that one is likely both to enjoy and also to repeat that activity. To that end, I submit that it might be more accurately regarded as an instance of “sitting in a massage chair at the Sharper Image” to suggest that a combination of Madison Bumgarner, Clayton Kershaw, and their respective California-based franchises — to suggest that all of it, together, conspires to produce a compelling spectacle

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television*.

*Unless Vin Scully has made trip to San Francisco. In which case, Vin Scully.

A Single Brief Note
Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features St. Louis at New York NL, starts at 1:10pm 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
Archie Bradley	AZ	2	5	4	5	4	MIA	Mat Latos	12:10
J.A. Happ	SEA	5	6	4	5	2	BAL	Chris Tillman	12:35
Scott Feldman	HOU	6	10	6	6	5	DET	David Price	13:08
Jaime Garcia*	STL	6	5	6	5	7	NYN	Jacob deGrom	13:10
Jerome Williams	PHI	5	0	4	3	7	COL	Jorge de la Rosa	15:10
Clayton Kershaw	LAN	10	8	8	4	7	SF	M.son Bumgarner	15:45
Matt Shoemaker	LAA	6	5	6	7	6	TOR	R.A. Dickey	19:07
Matt Garza	MIL	4	4	4	3	5	ATL	Julio Teheran	19:10
Jesse Chavez	OAK	5	6	6	5	8	TB	Alex Colome	19:10
Wan. Rodriguez	TEX	2	4	5	5	8	BOS	Clay Buchholz	19:10
Danny Salazar	CLE	10	7	5	0	3	CHA	John Danks	20:10
Kyle Hendricks	CHN	5	6	4	4	1	SD	Od.r Despaigne	21:10

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