NERD Game Scores for Monday, July 28, 2014

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
Washington at Miami | 19:10 ET
Jordan Zimmermann (118.0 IP, 84 xFIP-, 2.7 WAR) faces Nathan Eovaldi (130.2 IP, 108 xFIP-, 1.8 WAR). The virtues of the former are manifest. As for the latter, despite having posted merely average-ish fielding-independent numbers, he’s also recorded an overall strike rate (66.4%) and average fastball velocity (95.6 mph) one and two standard deviations, respectively, better than the mean produced by starting pitchers this season. A recipe, that, for tolerable baseball.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington Radio.

Two Brief Notes
Regarding Jason Lane, Who Starts This Afternoon
One might assume — indeed, the author assumed — that, because he’s a converted position player, that left-hander Jason Lane might belong to that class of pitcher who throws hard but lacks anything in the way of a second pitch. Indeed, nearly the opposite appears to be true in Lane’s case: over a pair of brief outings this season, he recorded an average fastball velocity of just 87.3 mph while also throwing his changeup about 35% of the time. He makes his first major-league start today at noon in Atlanta.

Regarding Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features Milwaukee at Tampa Bay, starts at 7:10pm 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.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Jason Lane*	SD	7	4	7	7	8	ATL	Ervin Santana	12:10
Chase Anderson	AZ	5	5	5	2	7	CIN	Homer Bailey	19:10
Kyle Lohse	MIL	5	6	6	8	7	TB	Jake Odorizzi	19:10
A.J. Burnett	PHI	2	3	3	2	5	NYN	Bartolo Colon	19:10
R.A. Dickey	TOR	9	6	6	3	3	BOS	Clay Buchholz	19:10
Jo. Zimmermann	WAS	9	7	8	7	7	MIA	Nathan Eovaldi	19:10
Yohan Flande	COL	2	9	5	5	6	CHN	Tsuyoshi Wada*	20:05
David Phelps	NYA	2	2	4	3	7	TEX	Yu Darvish	20:05
Jesse Chavez	OAK	6	8	6	9	3	HOU	B. Oberholtzer	20:10
Vance Worley	PIT	5	5	7	5	9	SF	M. Bumgarner	22:15

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