One Night Only: Game Previews for September 18th


Mike Trout or Matt Wieters: which is more of a street-wise Hercules, you think?

Tampa Bay (7) at Boston (9) | 13:35 ET
Playoff Race Status Update
Even with Tampa Bay’s victory last night, Cool Standings still gives the Red Sox a 94.1% chance of making the playoffs; Tampa Bay, just 5.4%.

Regarding This Game, Specifically
With David Price (210.1 IP, 3.02 SIERA) facing Tim Wakefield (145.2, 4.49), Tampa Bay likely has the better chance of winning.

Regarding This Game, Odds of Victory
The money line for this game is currently set at about -135 for Tampa Bay and +125 for Boston.

Regarding This Game, Odds of Victory, Part II
That suggests about a 56.5% chance of winning for Tampa Bay; about 43.5% for Boston.

Playoff Race Speculation, Beginning with the Words “In Conclusion”
In conclusion, Tampa Bay has about a 57% chance of entering the week behind only two games in the Wild Card race.

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MLB.TV Audio Feed: Red Sox Television.

Two Other Games
Los Angeles AL (5) at Baltimore (2) | 13:35 ET
Behold as Mike Trout and Matt Wieters try to out-hero each other. If Wieters is catching, that is. Which, if he’s not, my apologies, United States.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Angels Radio.

St. Louis (3) at Philadelphia (3) | 20:05 ET
Behold as the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast team attempts to make this game compelling for three-plus hours.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: ESPN.

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 5.3.

em>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
Freddy Garcia NYA 3 10 6 6 10 TOR Brandon Morrow 13:07
Zack Greinke MIL 10 8 6 5 5 CIN Dontrelle Willis 13:10
Jered Weaver LAA 5 5 7 2 5 BAL Alfredo Simon 13:35
Brad Hand FL 0 7 1 5 2 WAS Chien-Ming Wang 13:35
Dillon Gee NYN 4 4 6 5 10 ATL Brandon Beachy 13:35
David Price TB 9 7 10 9 7 BOS Tim Wakefield 13:35
John Danks CHA 7 2 4 10 2 KC Bruce Chen 14:10
Justin Masterson CLE 7 4 4 0 4 MIN Carl Pavano 14:10
Brett Myers HOU 6 4 5 4 7 CHN Ryan Dempster 14:20
Matt Cain SF 6 3 6 6 5 COL Esmil Rogers 15:10
Joe Saunders AZ 2 9 3 5 4 SD Aaron Harang 16:05
Justin Verlander DET 10 3 3 1 0 OAK Guillermo Moscoso 16:05
Brad Lincoln PIT 6 5 4 4 4 LAN Chad Billingsley 16:10
Matt Harrison TEX 5 8 6 1 9 SEA Felix Hernandez 16:10
Chris Carpenter STL 8 3 9 3 9 PHI Cole Hamels 20:05

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.

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Austin
14 years ago

It’s remarkable that a game started by Justin Verlander can have a NERD of only 3. Behold, the power of Guillermo Moscoso and the Oakland Athletics!