One Night Only: Game Previews for July 30th

A recent photo of Cleveland manager Manny Acta.

Featured Game
Kansas City (7) at Cleveland (8) | 19:05 ET
This game has all the things to put a smile on your face — and also on other parts of your body, if that’s something you’re into.

To wit:
• Felipe Paulino, pitching for the Royals, has been excellent since joining said team’s rotation at the beginning of June, producing this exact line: 60.2 IP, 8.75 K/9, 2.23 K/9, 48.8% GB, 2.99 SIERA, 3.23 xFIP, 82 xFIP-.
• Justin Masterson, pitching for the Indians, can throw all fastballs if he wants — and he doesn’t care what you or anyone thinks.
• The Royals (average batter age of 26.5) and Indians (28.0) are the youngest and fifth-youngest teams, respectively, in the league.
• The Indians, despite their youth — and the fifth-lowest opening-day payroll, as well — are only 2.5 games out of first place.
• People will/have come! Average attendance at Cleveland’s Progressive Field this season (per Baseball Reference): 21,158. Attendance last night (per MLB.com): 35,390.

Watch: Fox Sports Kansas City. (I say this with little authority, however. I know I’ve watched before and haven’t been gravely offended. And, as an aside, Royal broadcaster Ryan Lefebvre cites both lectio divina and Thomas Merton in this article from the National Catholic Register — which, regardless of your thoughts on religion, organized or otherwise, this suggests Lefebvre is probably the thoughtful, curious sort.)

Also Playing
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.7.

A note regarding these scores: the author found an error in the way that the Age variable was being calculated for Team NERD. If there appear to be any strange changes, then, this fix is probably why.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP	Home		Time
Chris Tillman	BAL	1	3	4	5	7	NYA	Bartolo Colon	13:05
Derek Holland	TEX	7	8	8	6	10	TOR	Brad Mills*	13:07
Dan Haren	LAA	8	8	7	5	5	DET	Duane Below*	16:10
Rodrigo Lopez	CHN	3	1	4	7	4	STL	Kyle Lohse	16:10
Alex Cobb	TB	5	4	6	1	10	SEA	Michael Pineda	16:10
Zach Britton	BAL	5	3	4	5	3	NYA	Ivan Nova	19:05
Felipe Paulino	KC	10	7	8	8	7	CLE	Justin Masterson	19:05
R.A. Dickey	NYN	9	7	6	3	4	WAS	Jason Marquis	19:05
James McDonald	PIT	4	7	7	3	10	PHI	Cliff Lee	19:05
Jon Lester	BOS	7	5	6	6	4	CHA	Philip Humber	19:10
Anibal Sanchez	FL	9	5	7	5	6	ATL	Tim Hudson	19:10
J.A. Happ	HOU	2	4	5	9	7	MIL	Yovani Gallardo	19:10
Mad. Bumgarner	SF	10	4	7	6	6	CIN	Mike Leake	19:10
Ubaldo Jimenez	COL	7	4	5	4	4	SD	Aaron Harang	20:35
Nick Blackburn	MIN	4	2	2	1	0	OAK	Gu. Moscoso	21:05
Micah Owings*	AZ	5	9	6	3	6	LAN	Chad Billingsley	22:10

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.
Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire.