One Night Only: Game Previews for September 15th


Jeremy Hellickson: already angry at you.

Tampa Bay (7) at Boston (10) | 19:10 ET
Brass Tacks
In terms of why this game is interesting, it’s because these two teams begin a four-game series today with one team (the Rays) exactly four games behind the other (the Red Sox) in the AL Wild Card race.

A Note Regarding Jeremy Hellickson
Jeremy Hellickson, who’s starting tonight for Tampa Bay, entered the season as one of the game’s most interesting prospects, thanks to his command and excellent changeup.

A Second Note Regarding Jeremy Hellickson
Hellickson’s season has maybe been a bit disappointing in light of his pedigree. Line: 170.1 IP, 15.6% K, 8.5% BB, 33.8% GB, 4.48 SIERA, 4.57 xFIP, 114 xFIP-.

A Third Note Regarding Jeremy Hellickson
Hellickson has faced 56 total batters over the last two games and struck out only three of them.

A Fourth Note Regarding Jeremy Hellickson
The author would mention none of this to Hellickson himself, owing to how the latter appears to be constantly annoyed and is almost definitely carrying a shiv of some description.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Red Sox Television.

Alterna-Game
Washington (6) at New York NL (4) | 13:10 ET
Rookies Tom Milone and Chris Schwinden, both noted for pitching above their stuff, make their third and second major-league starts tonight, respectively. (And, yes, that’s the same Tom Milone who’s game-worn and autographed hat you can buy from Latino night on August 8th, 2011 at at Alliance Bank Stadium on August 8, 2011 that’s green, yellow, and red.)

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Nationals or Mets 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 5.2.

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
Tom Milone* WAS 8 6 6 4 8 NYN Chris Schwinden* 13:10
Anibal Sanchez FL 9 8 5 3 2 PHI Kyle Kendrick 14:35
Randy Wells CHN 3 4 4 5 7 CIN Homer Bailey 19:10
Jeremy Hellickson TB 3 7 8 10 7 BOS Kyle Weiland* 19:10
Alex Sanabia* FL 5 8 6 3 10 PHI Cliff Lee 19:35
Fausto Carmona CLE 6 4 7 8 6 TEX Alexi Ogando 20:05
Mark Buehrle CHA 3 2 3 10 4 KC Jeff Francis 20:10
Ryan Vogelsong SF 5 3 4 6 5 COL Jhoulys Chacin 20:40
Max Scherzer DET 7 2 5 1 8 OAK Brandon McCarthy 22:05
Ross Ohlendorf PIT 4 5 4 4 6 LAN Dana Eveland* 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.





Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.

5 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Eric
14 years ago

Great work here