One Night Only: Doc Halladay v. Big Johnson

by
June 9, 2010

Tonight’s main event is of the “no-brainer” variety.

In other words, you can watch it even if you don’t have a brain.

Florida at Philadelphia | Wednesay, June 09 | 7:05pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Marlins: Josh Johnson (NERD: 10)
77.0 IP, 9.00 K/9, 2.81 BB/9, .286 BABIP, 48.5% GB, 4.8% HR/FB, 3.25 xFIP

Phils: Roy Halladay (NERD: 10)
93.0 IP, 7.45 K/9, 1.26 BB/9, .302 BABIP, 53.4% GB, 4.3% HR/FB, 2.93 xFIP

First, It Needs to Be Said
The NERD scores you see above are slightly different than the ones I introduced to the wide readership last week. One of the biggest flaws of NERD 1.0 was the total absence of velocity as a component. In NERD 1.1 — or whatever’s the nerdiest possible name for it — I’ve added the absolute value of each pitcher’s z-score (i.e. standard deviations from the mean) for velocity. That gives a bump not only to Ubaldo Jimenez (+2.23) and Justin Verlander (+1.95), but also to Tim Wakefield (+6.10) and Jamie Moyer (+3.30). I’ll submit a recalculation, probably with some other improvements, as soon as sloth allows.

Second, It Also Needs to Be Said
There are only five pitchers (out of about 160) with perfect NERD scores at the moment: Cliff Lee, Dan Haren, Francisco Liriano, and the two guys pitching tonight. Actually, go ahead and add Stephen Strasburg to that list, just for Esses and Gees. Still, that’s not too many.

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.

Watch For
• Roy Halladay’s Command. Is there a difference between command and control? I’m not convinced — although I’m willing to be. In any case, if there is a difference, my bet is that Halladay is likely an object lesson in such a thing. It’s not just that Halladay doesn’t walk guys — Doug Fister has about the same BB/9 — it’s that he owns the strike zone.
• Josh Johnson’s Fastball. Johnson has the fourth-fastest average fastball velocity among qualified starters. Not until I engaged upon this absurd experiment — i.e. NERD and its attendant concerns — have I truly realized how thrilling velocity is to behold. And it’s some combination of velocity and placement that gives Johnson’s fastball a 9.2% whiff rate on the season — compared to a 7% or so whiff rate across all major leaguers on same pitch.
• Mike Stanton, Part Deux. The 20-year-old outfielder made his debut for Florida yesterday. Here’s his line from Double-A Jacksonville: .311/.441/.726. So, uh, that happened.

If I Had My Druthers
• Hallday would throw his cutter to lefties a whole bunch. Halladay can throw said pitch right at the back foot of a lefty batter. Like, he threw two of them to Chase Headley in the the third inning of his last start. Headley swung and missed at both. Voila:





 

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

12 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Bradley WoodrumMember since 2020
15 years ago

So when will NERD be added to the player pages?

1