NERD Game Scores: Tyler Glasnow Debut Event

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
Pittsburgh at St. Louis | 13:45 ET
Glasnow (MLB debut) vs. Wainwright (103.1 IP, 101 xFIP-)
This afternoon and evening features numerous pitching appearances of note: Lucas Giolito‘s second career start, Hyun-Jin Ryu’s first major-league appearance since 2014, and the league’s hardest-throwing left-handed starters in Kansas City. Still, it’s the debut of Pittsburgh’s Tyler Glasnow, a top-10 prospect by most accounts, which likely merits the greatest attention. As a result, the author has assessed a score of 16 to Glasnow, so as to render the Pirates-Cardinals game today’s most highly rated. This is a rhetorical act known not as deus ex machina, but rather stultus ex machina — which is to say, “idiot from the machine.”

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.

Two Other Brief Notes
Today’s Free Game
Today’s free game features Minnesota at Texas, starts at 20:05 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.