NERD Game Scores: Ft. a Playoff-Odds Adjustment Experiment

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
San Francisco at New York NL | 13:10 ET*
Madison Bumgarner (145.0 IP, 83 xFIP-, 2.3 WAR) faces Bartolo Colon (141.2 IP, 100 xFIP-, 1.9 WAR). Because the author’s presence is required in southern Michigan even as he writes these words in the northern part of that same long state, he’s unable to provide an entirely detailed explanation for why today’s Giants and Mets contest is today’s most highly rated. In brief, however, what I’ve done is to employ a suggestion provided by reader DavidKB from last week — a suggestion to apply a playoff-odds adjustment all season long, but to weight that adjustment on a scale relative to the number of games remaining until the end of the season. So now teams which possess a chance of making the divisional series very close to 33% are likely to also possess a higher team NERD score.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Basically All of Them.

*It appears as though, after updating John Lackey’s team from Boston to St. Louis, that today’s most highly rated game is actually Milwaukee at St. Louis — largely owing to how the clubs possess 41.4% and 50.8% odds, respectively, of reaching the divisional series. All other notes are relevant, however.

A Single and Brief Note
Regarding Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features the same Giants-Mets game noted above, 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.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Yu Darvish	TEX	7	3	5	6	6	CLE	Trevor Bauer	13:05
Jorge de la Rosa	COL	2	4	4	3	5	DET	Anibal Sanchez	13:08
Mike Leake	CIN	6	3	5	4	6	MIA	Jacob Turner	13:10
Mad. Bumgarner	SF	9	9	6	2	5	NYN	Bartolo Colon	13:10
Cole Hamels	PHI	8	2	6	5	10	WAS	Step’n Strasburg	13:35
Hisashi Iwakuma	SEA	8	5	5	7	1	BAL	Chris Tillman	13:35
Jered Weaver	LAA	3	7	6	5	7	TB	Jake Odorizzi	13:40
Kyle Gibson	MIN	4	3	4	2	6	CHA	Jose Quintana	14:10
Marcus Stroman	TOR	9	9	6	4	0	HOU	Scott Feldman	14:10
Matt Garza	MIL	3	9	7	7	7	STL	John Lackey	14:15
James Shields	KC	6	4	5	5	7	OAK	Scott Kazmir	16:05
Aaron Harang	ATL	3	9	6	3	8	SD	Tyson Ross	16:10
Edwin Jackson	CHN	5	3	4	4	4	LAN	Josh Beckett	16:10
Francisco Liriano	PIT	7	9	6	3	4	AZ	Trevor Cahill	16:10
David Phelps	NYA	2	5	3	2	3	BOS	Clay Buchholz	20:00

To learn how Game NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.