One Night Only: Game Previews for August 6th

August 6, 2011

Today’s edition of One Night Only is prepared to shock you in your mind.

Featured Game
Atlanta (6) at New York Nationals (5) | 19:10 ET
• Unless you’re a Met fan or own him in a fantasy league, there’s a strong chance you’re unaware of how well Jonathon Niese’s (9) 2011 is going.
• Which, I say that mostly because I, personally, was unaware of how well Niese’s 2011 was going.
• By way of illustration, here are fives names after Niese’s on the xFIP leaderboard: Justin Masterson, Jon Lester, C.J. Wilson, Jered Weaver, Josh Beckett.
• Weird and great, right?
• Also weird and great: most every available photo of Klaus Kinski.

Watch: New York 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 5.7.

Note: Nate Eovaldi will be making his major-league debut for the Dodgers. Eovaldi at Double-A Chattanooga: 103.0 IP, 8.65 K/9, 4.02 BB/9, 0.26 HR/9, 3.05 FIP.

Note: Zach Stewart, and not Jake Peavy, will start for the White Sox.

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Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP	Home		Time
Johnny Cueto	CIN	6	6	4	1	2	CHN	Carlos Zambrano	13:05
CC Sabathia	NYA	10	6	7	5	4	BOS	John Lackey	16:10
Cole Hamels	PHI	10	3	7	6	6	SF	Matt Cain	16:10
Chris Narveson	MIL	6	7	6	4	5	HOU	Brett Myers	19:05
Cory Luebke	SD	10	5	6	4	3	PIT	Paul Maholm	19:05
Brandon Morrow	TOR	10	6	6	4	2	BAL	Chris Tillman	19:05
Tommy Hanson	ATL	8	6	8	5	9	NYN	Jonathon Niese	19:10
Jake Peavy	CHA	8	3	5	2	4	MIN	Carl Pavano	19:10
Justin Verlander	DET	10	4	8	7	7	KC	Danny Duffy	19:10
Brandon McCarthy	OAK	7	2	6	5	6	TB	Alex Cobb	19:10
Chris Carpenter	STL	8	8	7	6	7	FL	Ricky Nolasco	19:10
Fausto Carmona	CLE	5	9	6	9	5	TEX	C.J. Wilson	20:05
Undecided*	LAN	5	3	4	8	2	AZ	Joe Saunders	20:10
Livan Hernandez	WAS	3	4	4	4	5	COL	Jhoulys Chacin	20:10
Blake Beavan	SEA	4	1	3	7	2	LAA	Tyler Chatwood	21:05

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.

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Jose Iglesias

14 years ago

Very Handsome Author Sir,

Who holds the record for the highest game NERD this season?

Carson CistulliMember

Reply to Jose Iglesias

Equally Handsome Reader-Commenter,

There’ve definitely been two NERD game scores of 9.

See here:

Arizona at Kansas City from June 23rd:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/one-night-only-hot-game-previews-for-june-23rd/

Cleveland at Arizona from June 28th:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/one-night-only-game-previews-june-28th-30th/

Maybe there’ve been some others, too.

In any case, this is what’s generally known as a Mega Game.

I mean, I’m sure you already knew that, though.

TartanElk

Reply to Carson Cistulli

Is a Mega-Game comparable to watching “Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus?”

On another note, is 3 the lowest game score we’ve had so far this season? I’ve looked through a bunch and I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything. So likely, I’ve missed a ton. I find it interesting there have been exponentially more “unwatchable” games than mega games.

By the way, I vote to assign Danny Duffy the nickname of “Duffman.” I submit into evidence, the following:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7JY2V_GEuE&feature=related

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar2IisGMAbo (Perfect intro. music)

I rest my case.