NERD Game Scores for Wednesday, August 31, 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
Toronto at Baltimore | 19:05 ET
Sanchez (156.1 IP, 82 xFIP-) vs. Gallardo (91.2 IP, 130 xFIP-)
This seems like the sort of television for which one might be required to make an appointment: an unexpected and legitimate Cy Young candidate starts for a club that possesses the slimmest of leads over not one, but two, division rivals. One of those two division rivals is the opponent. Starring Aaron Sanchez and all the rules governing baseball.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio or Baltimore Television.

Three Other Brief Notes
On Luis Cessa and Luis Cessa’s Success
Right-hander Luis Cessa has been impressive for the Yankees over his first pair of major-league starts, featuring a fastball that sits above 95 mph and also producing a 79 xFIP-. The slider has also been useful: Cessa has recorded a swing and miss on more than 25% of them. League average is closer to 15%.

Here’s an example both of the fastball and slider from Cessa’s most recent start:

Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features Cincinnati at Los Angeles AL, starts at 19:05 ET, and can be accessed by means of this hyperlinked text.

On NERD’s Playoff Adjustment and the Cubs
As the season wears on, the algorithm for game NERD scores weights team scores progressively more heavily and pitcher scores less heavily — to account for the greater influence of a team’s posteason chances on the watchability of their games. Also as the season progresses, the algorithm for those team NERD scores weights various performance factors (weighted batting, adjusted home-run rate) less heavily and playoff odds more heavily.

The idea of the postseason adjustment is to assess higher NERD scores to clubs which feature less certainty regarding the postseason. To accomplish this, the author begins with the divisional odds and wild-card odds and finds the absolute value of each number minus 0.5 (or, 50%). I then add the results together divide by two. Then I subtract the result of that figure from 0.5 and multiply the resulting number by 20. Finally, I normalize all the scores to create a league average of 5.0.

Here’s all of that using the Chicago Cubs as an example. The Cubs have divisional and wild-card odds of 99.9% and 0.1%, respectively, using the site’s “coin flip” methodology (which seems to best represent how the human mind conceives of postseason odds).

• [ |0.999 – 0.5| + |0.00 – 0.001| ] / 2 = 0.499
• (0.5 – 0.499) * 20 = 0.0

That 0.0 number is the postseason adjustment just before it’s normalized to create a league average of 5.0. The raw league average right now is 1.91. So, to find the Cubs’ score we subtract that figure from 5.0 and add the difference to the Cubs’ raw score.

So:

• 0.0 + (5.0 – 1.91) = 3.1

That 3.1 represents Chicago’s current playoff adjustment — a figure to which the team’s NERD score will gravitate continuously as the season continues. It’s also the lowest possible score a club can receive at the moment, one shared only by very poor clubs that have been effectively (or literally) eliminated from postseason contention. Because, like those clubs, the Cubs aren’t playing games of any great consequence at the moment. Playing in a division where it appears as though 88 wins would be sufficient to claim that division, the Cubs have already recorded 84 wins. They could produce a historically bad month of baseball, in other words, and still win the Central.