One Night Only: Game Previews for August 22nd

Tampa Bay’s Desmond Jennings will use his sunbeam superpower to unsettle Justin Verlander.

Featured Game
Detroit (2) at Tampa Bay (7) | 19:10 ET
• Justin Verlander, first among AL pitchers in SIERA (2.75) and WAR (6.2), pitches tonight for a Detroit team that improved its playoff odds either to 69.1% or 79.2% last night, depending on which methodology you prefer.
• Owing to how the center-field camera at Tropicana Field is one of the league’s better ones, tonight represents an opportunity to get all familiar-like with Verlander’s stuff.
• Apropos said stuff, here’s what Verlander throws according to Pitch F/x: fastball (45.6%), curveball (18.8%), changeup (18.2%), slider (8.6%), two-seamer (8.8%).
• Per pitch-type runs (which buckets four- and two-seam fastballs together), literally all those pitches are worth more than a run per 100 thrown.
• Literally literally. Not fake literally.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Tampa Bay Television.

Also Playing
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.3.

The following Game Scores include the new and improved playoff-odds adjustment, which you can learn about in your brain by clicking here.

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Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP	Home		Time
Chris Narveson	MIL	6	7	5	5	5	PIT	Jeff Karstens	17:05
Zack Greinke	MIL	10	7	6	5	6	PIT	Brad Lincoln*	Gm 2
Joe Saunders	AZ	2	9	5	4	5	WAS	Ross Detwiler	19:05
Dillon Gee	NYN	3	5	5	3	10	PHI	Cliff Lee	19:05
Jason Vargas	SEA	3	0	5	6	5	CLE	Fausto Carmona	19:05
Justin Verlander	DET	10	2	8	7	6	TB	Jeff Niemann	19:10
Jair Jurrjens	ATL	5	5	4	3	7	CHN	Ryan Dempster	20:05
Erik Bedard	BOS	7	10	7	8	6	TEX	C.J. Wilson	20:05
Zach Britton	BAL	6	2	3	0	4	MIN	Carl Pavano	20:10
Nathan Eovaldi*	LAN	6	4	6	3	8	STL	Chris Carpenter	20:15
Brett Myers	HOU	5	3	4	6	5	COL	Jhoulys Chacin	20:40

NERD represents an attempt to anticipate the watchability of a game for the baseballing enthusiast.
To learn more about Pitcher NERD, click here and scroll down a little.
To learn more about latest Team NERD, click here.
To learn how Game NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.