One Night Only: Game Previews for September 13th

Matt Wieters, and at least eight other people, play(s) for the Baltimore team.

Toronto (6) at Boston (10) | 19:10 ET
Regarding the Situation Here
The situation here is that, with Tampa Bay’s 5-2 victory over Baltimore on Monday night, the Red Sox are now only three games ahead of the Rays in the wild-card race — a fact which, much like a bee or a cell phone near a pair of speakers, is creating buzz.

Regarding the Situation Here, Part II
Another part of the situation here is that elder statesman — and actual elder — Tim Wakefield has made seven fruitless starts in pursuit of his 200th win.

Regarding the Situation Here, Part III
Some more of the situation is that WAR leaders — and probably AL MVP frontrunners — Jacoby Ellsbury (8.2) and Jose Bautista (7.8) are both playing in this game.

Regarding the Situation Here, Part IV
The last part of the situation is how Brett Lawrie — slashing .304/.383/.647 (188 wRC+), with a totally sustainable .316 BABIP over the last month — and Brandon Morrow are playing in this game, too.

Regarding Parts No. II and III, Above
Those aren’t actually so compelling for the author.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Red Sox Television.

Two Other Games
Tampa Bay (7) at Baltimore (2) | 19:05 ET
David Price of the Wild Card-contending Tampa Bay Rays will pitch against Matt Wieters and whomever else on the Orioles can get away for three hours.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Rays Television.

Los Angeles Americans (5) at Oakland (1) | 22:05 ET
As mentioned in yesterday’s rapture-inducing edition of the Leaderboards of Pleasure, Jerome Williams (pitching tonight) leads all pitchers with 20-plus innings as a starter in swinging-strike percentage, at 14.9%.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Hummina Hummina?

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.

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

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP	Home		Time
Chris Carpenter	STL	8	3	7	5	5	PIT	Jeff Karstens	19:05
David Price	TB	9	7	8	2	4	BAL	Alfredo Simon	19:05
Ryan Dempster	CHN	7	4	6	5	7	CIN	Mike Leake	19:10
Brad Hand	FL	0	8	4	4	8	ATL	Mike Minor	19:10
Brandon Morrow	TOR	10	6	9	10	7	BOS	Tim Wakefield	19:10
Chien-Ming Wang	WAS	1	6	2	4	3	NYN	Dillon Gee	19:10
Justin Masterson	CLE	7	4	6	8	5	TEX	Matt Harrison	20:05
Cole Hamels	PHI	9	3	4	4	2	HOU	J.A. Happ	20:05
Esmil Rogers	COL	5	6	7	8	10	MIL	Zack Greinke	20:10
Justin Verlander	DET	10	2	6	2	6	CHA	Gavin Floyd	20:10
Carl Pavano	MIN	4	0	3	10	2	KC	Bruce Chen	20:10
Jerome Williams	LAA	9	5	8	1	1	OAK	Guillermo Moscoso	22:05
Ian Kennedy	AZ	7	9	5	4	5	LAN	Chad Billingsley	22:10
A.J. Burnett	NYA	6	10	4	0	3	SEA	Charlie Furbush	22:10
Cory Luebke	SD	9	6	6	3	6	SF	Matt Cain	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.