NERD Game Scores: Phil Hughes, Out of Curiosity

by
July 3, 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
New York AL at Minnesota | 20:10 ET
Masahiro Tanaka (115.1 IP, 64 xFIP-, 3.0 WAR) faces Phil Hughes (103.0 IP, 85 xFIP-, 3.1 WAR). While the virtues of the former are conspicuous, it might interest the reader to learn that the latter (i.e. Phil Hughes) has produced (a) a slightly higher WAR this season than Tanaka and, indeed, (b) the highest WAR of his eight-year career already and (c) a league-best walk rate of just 2.4%. A second possibility is that none of this interests the reader, who has continued reading this paragraph out of only that sort of grotesque curiosity which afflicts men from time to time. In either case, there’s little more of substance to say on the matter.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Minnesota Radio.

Two Brief Notes
Mookie Betts Status Update
Through Wednesday now, beloved Red Sox prospect Mookie Betts has recorded a 1:1 walk-to-strikeout ratio and single home run through 16 plate appearances — which home run (a) he hit yesterday off Carlos Villanueva (box) and (b) has been commemorated at no great inconvenience to the author by means of the video below.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

Regarding Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features St. Louis at San Francisco, starts at 3:45pm 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.

NERD Image 4

Away   SP Tm. Gm. Tm. SP   Home Time
Carlos Martinez* STL 5 3 6 6 9 SF M. Bumgarner 15:45
Kyle Kendrick PHI 1 2 3 8 4 MIA Brad Hand* 18:10
Brand. McCarthy AZ 9 6 6 5 4 PIT Vance Worley 19:05
Yu Darvish TEX 7 4 6 6 5 BAL Wei-Yin Chen 19:05
Erik Bedard TB 2 7 5 4 8 DET Max Scherzer 19:08
Zack Greinke LAN 8 5 6 9 2 COL Franklin Morales 20:10
Masahiro Tanaka NYA 10 3 8 3 8 MIN Phil Hughes 20:10
R.A. Dickey TOR 9 7 7 7 6 OAK Sonny Gray 21:05
Br. Oberholtzer HOU 4 7 7 6 9 LAA Matt Shoemaker 22:05

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





 

Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.

2 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
RoucheX
11 years ago

I’m no mathematician, but I think the Toronto at Oakland game is the most highly rated.

1
MDLMember since 2021
11 years ago
Reply to  RoucheX

Good thing you’re not a mathematician 🙂

2