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.