NERD Game Scores for Tuesday, August 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
San Francisco at Los Angeles NL | 20:10 ET
Bumgarner (175.2 IP, 86 xFIP-) vs. Maeda (136.2 IP, 91 xFIP-)
There are those who will tell you — on the subject of this sport about which we all care — there are those who’ll say that “the name of the game is getting wins.” Couriers of misinformation, is what this lot are. Look in any reference text of your choice, and you’ll see: the name of the game is baseball. So neither believe them, nor accept the ride they’ve offered, because it could very likely end in the abduction of your person.

This isn’t to say, of course, that wins aren’t important. They represent a sort of currency. Collect a sufficient number of them and you — you, in this case, being a major-league baseball team and not merely one who’s attempting to escape the woeful burdens of the workday for a moment — and you can exchange them for admission into the postseason.

What’s notable about the Giants and Dodgers at the moment is that they possess an almost identical number of wins, the former with 68, the latter with one more than 68. And if the Giants win tonight, both clubs will possess one more than 68 wins — and both sit atop the NL West. The consequences of the game are considerable, in other words. We watch, our breath teeming with bate.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles Television.

Another Brief Note
Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features Washington at Baltimore, starts at 19:05 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.