NERD Game Scores for Thursday, September 24, 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
Cleveland at Minnesota | 20:10 ET
Anderson (77.2 IP, 111 xFIP-) vs. Gibson (186.0 IP, 100 xFIP-)
No second-place club is currently within fewer than three games of their respective division’s first-place club. Between that and an abbreviated Thursday schedule, none of tonight’s matchups feature much in the way of stirring consequences. The closest thing to urgency? Minnesota’s pursuit of the American League’s second wild-card spot. The Twins sit merely a game behind the Astros for the opportunity to participate in the play-in contest. Tonight represents an opportunity not only to observe how the club fares in that endeavor, but also to observe two of the AL’s most productive rookies, Cleveland’s Francisco Lindor (3.8 WAR) and Minnesota’s Miguel Sano (2.1 WAR). And for those among us who have a state car inspection scheduled for 5:30pm at the region’s best and/or only Nissan dealership, tonight also represents an opportunity to pass an hour acting out a strange, one-man performance of Sartre’s No Exit in that same dealership’s poorly lit waiting room.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland Radio.
Another Brief Note
Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features Arizona at Los Angeles NL, starts at 15:10 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 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patrick Corbin | AZ | 9 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 10 | LAN | Clayton Kershaw | 15:10 |
| Jeff Locke | PIT | 6 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 5 | COL | Chad Bettis | 15:10 |
| Cole Hamels | TEX | 8 | 7 | 6 | 4 | 5 | OAK | Chris Bassitt | 15:35 |
| Tyler Wilson | BAL | 0 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | WAS | Tanner Roark | 16:05 |
| Chris Sale | CHA | 10 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 10 | NYA | Michael Pineda | 19:05 |
| Steven Matz | NYN | 7 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 0 | CIN | Josh Smith | 19:10 |
| Alec Asher | PHI | 1 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | MIA | Jarred Cosart | 19:10 |
| Erasmo Ramirez | TB | 7 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 | BOS | Wade Miley | 19:10 |
| Taylor Jungmann | MIL | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 8 | STL | Michael Wacha | 19:15 |
| Cody Anderson | CLE | 5 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 4 | MIN | Kyle Gibson | 20:10 |
| James Paxton | SEA | 5 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 7 | KC | Johnny Cueto | 20:10 |
| Ma.n Bumgarner | SF | 9 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 6 | SD | Ian Kennedy | 21:10 |
* = Fewer than 10 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
Remember, Carson: You’re in a laundry room…
Comic Con 12 A/V Club 0
Sour Nerds 9 Big Bang Theorists 5
Urkel 3 Screech 2 (14 inn)
Potsie 7 Ralph 4
Daria 15 Bill Nye 1
Carson, thank you for doing NERD scores every day. I enjoy them very much.
However, something seems amiss when Matz (today) and Stroman (yesterday) only have pitcher NERD scores of 7, while Logan Verret had an 8 before his last start. I know the score is derived from a stats-based formula, but both Matz and Stroman are successful, very dynamic young pitchers who are ticketed by their organizations to be core rotation cogs going forward. Verrett, OTOH, is considered to be no more than organizational filler at this point, someone to temporarily take the place of deGrom or Harvey in the rotation in order to give them a spell. Heck, Verrett was even claimed off waivers twice this year. As such, I was wondering if there were a way to better distinguish the more promising and “watchable” pitchers from the ordinary. It seems to me that Verrett should only be a 5 or 6 at most, while Matz and Stroman both deserve to be an 8 or 9.
Since so much of NERD is essentially arbitrary — at the discretion of the “very handsome author” — maybe said handsome author could better account for the high interest factor surrounding certain pitchers? Perhaps it could be something like an ABF (Arbitrary Buzz Factor) score of +1 or +2, added only to those pitchers for whom there is a lot of buzz and interest.
For example, an ABF +1 could be awarded to both Matz and Stroman. And Kershaw, as long as he continues to pitch at such an elite level, deserves to be distinguished even from other top starters. So he might get an ABF +1 every time. Don’t you think this would better serve to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of what to watch?
Interestingly, Matz and Stroman both grew up on eastern Long Island, are friends who pitched against each other while members of neighboring high school baseball teams, and could easily face off against each other in the World Series this year if both the Jays and Mets make it that far.