NERD Game Scores for Tuesday, August 18, 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
New York NL at Baltimore | 19:05 ET
deGrom (146.2 IP, 78 xFIP-) vs. Gausman (60.1 IP, 103 xFIP-)
Were the velocity aging curve for pitchers not merely a line on a graph but rather the topographic profile of a road in your local municipality, public-works officials would erect a sign at the beginning of it alerting motorists to the steep grade which lay ahead. Indeed, science reveals that pitchers lose, on average, about 0.3 mph per year of fastball velocity. What Mets right-hander Jacob deGrom has done instead, however, is to steadily gain fastball velocity since his major-league debut last May. After sitting at roughly 93.0 mph over his first handful of starts in 2014, deGrom has now produced an average fastball velocity of 95.0 mph or greater in 11 of his most recent 14 appearances. This open disregard for the natural limits of human anatomy is the precise sort of behavior which, were deGrom not a Dutch-American person but rather a character in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, would provoke the considerable anger of the Olympic gods — and the sort of robust vengeance of which those same gods are capable.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

One Other Brief Note
Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features Seattle at Texas, starts at 20:05 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
Chase Anderson	AZ	3	5	7	10	9	PIT	Francisco Liriano	19:05
Mike Pelfrey	MIN	2	3	5	9	6	NYA	CC Sabathia	19:05
Jacob deGrom	NYN	10	6	8	8	8	BAL	Kevin Gausman	19:05
R.A. Dickey	TOR	8	8	6	2	7	PHI	Aaron Nola	19:05
Trevor Bauer	CLE	6	4	5	3	7	BOS	Eduard. Rodriguez	19:10
Edinson Volquez	KC	4	3	4	3	8	CIN	Raisel Iglesias	19:10
Anibal Sanchez	DET	6	3	6	9	7	CHN	Jason Hammel	20:05
Hisashi Iwakuma	SEA	8	3	4	5	1	TEX	Chi-Chi Gonzalez	20:05
Adam Conley*	MIA	4	3	3	2	4	MIL	Tyler Cravy	20:10
Jake Odorizzi	TB	6	3	6	9	4	HOU	Scott Feldman	20:10
Ryan Vogelsong	SF	1	10	5	4	5	STL	Lance Lynn	20:15
Jo. Zimmermann	WAS	6	7	5	3	6	COL	David Hale	20:40
John Danks	CHA	4	2	5	8	7	LAA	Garrett Richards	22:05
Clayton Kershaw	LAN	10	9	7	3	6	OAK	Felix Doubront	22:05
Matthew Wisler	ATL	4	2	4	3	7	SD	James Shields	22:10

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