One Night Only: Game Previews for August 8th
This is probably a Houston Astro.
Featured Game
Houston (4) at Arizona (8) | 21:40 ET
• NERD suggests, largely on the strength of Roy Halladay’s (10) excellence, that one would do well to watch Philadelphia-Los Angeles tonight.
• What NERD doesn’t know is the effect that watching the Dodgers can have on serotonin levels in humans.
• Another thing that NERD doesn’t know is how the Houston Astros are essentially a different team than — well, than a week ago, about.
• By my count, four of the Houston starters from Sunday’s game had made their major-league debut within the past three weeks.
• To wit: Jose Altuve (July 20th), J.D. Martinez (July 30th), Jimmy Paredes (August 1st), Jack Shuck (August 5th).
Audio Feed: Astros Television. (I’ve actually never watched their broadcast before, but some readers have suggested that Bill Brown and Jim Deshaies are above average.)
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 4.9.
| Away | SP | Tm. | Gm. | Tm. | SP | Home | Time | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| John Danks | CHA | 6 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | BAL | Jeremy Guthrie | 19:05 |
| Derek Lowe | ATL | 6 | 6 | 4 | 6 | 0 | FL | Brad Hand | 19:10 |
| Tim Wakefield | BOS | 7 | 5 | 6 | 2 | 7 | MIN | Scott Baker | 19:10 |
| Jason Hammel | COL | 2 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | CIN | Homer Bailey | 19:10 |
| Luke Hochevar | KC | 4 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 3 | TB | Jeremy Hellickson | 19:10 |
| Tim Stauffer | SD | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 2 | NYN | Mike Pelfrey | 19:10 |
| Charlie Furbush* | SEA | 5 | 1 | 5 | 8 | 5 | TEX | Matt Harrison | 20:05 |
| Chien-Ming Wang* | WAS | 5 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 10 | CHN | Matt Garza | 20:05 |
| Wandy Rodriguez | HOU | 5 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 8 | AZ | Daniel Hudson | 21:40 |
| Roy Halladay | PHI | 10 | 3 | 7 | 3 | 6 | LAN | Hiroki Kuroda | 22:10 |
| Charlie Morton | PIT | 4 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 4 | SF | Ryan Vogelsong | 22:15 |
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.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
I can’t watch the Houston LASTros (<— patent pending).
As StL was sweeping Florida, I was hoping for some help from HOU against MIL.
Yeah, HOU may be a different team in terms of player names, but they're the same in terms of quality.
I think that the LASTros nickname was used many years ago when the Astros were so bad.
Perhaps you should try DISAstros. Considering where Drayton McLane has taken that team, it’s fitting.
5-0 Houston in first!