One Night Only: Game Previews for September 20th

by
September 20, 2011


Topical, science-y.

Tampa Bay (7) at New York AL (10) | 19:05 ET
A Fact Regarding the Tampa Bay Rays
Entering play Monday, the Tampa Bay Rays are a mere two games behind Boston in the AL Wild Card race.

A Second Fact Regarding the Tampa Bays Rays
Entering play Monday, the Tampa Bay Rays have an 8.9% chance of making the playoffs, per Cool Standings.

In Terms of Yankee Pitching
In terms of Yankee pitching, Ivan Nova (151.1 IP, 102 xFIP-) is pitching for the Yankees.

Regarding Ivan Nova
Per the data from Baseball Info Solutions, Nova’s changeup usage is down from 2010 (10.6% to 4.6%), but his slider usage is up (2.1% to 11.2%).

Regarding Ivan Nova, Part II
Per the data from Pitch F/x, Nova’s changeup usage is only slightly down (9.9% to 7.9 %), but his slider (0.0% to 2.9%) and cutter (0.0% to 2.6%) usage has increased.

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.

Carson Cistulli’s Guess
Carson Cistulli’s guess is that Pitch F/x is classifying Nova’s new slider as sometimes a slider and, other times, a cutter.

Carson Cistulli’s Second Guess
Carson Cistulli’s second guess is frequently (a) directed at his own self and (b) debilitating.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Rays Television.

Two Other Games
Baltimore (2) at Boston (9) | 19:10 ET
In which the Red Sox are like, “I hope Erik Bedard doesn’t break in half today.”

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Red Sox Television.

San Francisco (3) at Los Angeles NL (4) | 22:10 ET
In which Tim Lincecum and Clayton Kershaw you-know-what in front of you-know-who.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Dodgers 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 5.5.

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
Gavin Floyd CHA 6 2 4 4 5 CLE Fausto Carmona 13:05
Ross Detwiler WAS 4 5 2 3 2 PHI Kyle Kendrick 13:05
Dylan Axelrod* CHA 10 2 6 4 7 CLE Zach McAllister* 19:05
Wade Davis TB 2 7 8 10 5 NYA Ivan Nova 19:05
Tom Milone* WAS 8 5 7 3 10 PHI Cliff Lee 19:05
Joel Pineiro LAA 3 5 5 6 4 TOR Brett Cecil 19:07
Randall Delgado ATL 4 5 7 8 9 FL Anibal Sanchez 19:10
Rick VandenHurk* BAL 6 2 7 9 6 BOS Erik Bedard 19:10
Bud Norris HOU 7 4 5 5 7 CIN Homer Bailey 19:10
Shaun Marcum MIL 5 8 4 4 3 CHN Randy Wells 20:05
Brad Penny DET 1 2 5 10 10 KC Luis Mendoza* 20:10
Jason Vargas SEA 3 0 3 0 7 MIN Liam Hendriks 20:10
Mike Pelfrey NYN 2 4 6 3 8 STL Edwin Jackson 20:15
Mat Latos SD 8 5 5 6 5 COL Jhoulys Chacin 20:40
Charlie Morton PIT 4 4 5 9 8 AZ Daniel Hudson 21:40
Derek Holland TEX 7 9 6 1 8 OAK Rich Harden 22:05
Tim Lincecum SF 8 3 8 4 10 LAN Clayton Kershaw 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.

6 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
dudleyMember since 2016
14 years ago

though even if you’re right about Pitch F/x, that still leaves 5.7% of Baseball Info’s “sliders” unexplained. maybe they think sometimes he’s throwing small hamburgers.

0
MikeS
14 years ago
Reply to  dudley

Might it be that he’s throwing that best named of all pitches, the slutter?

0
CircleChange11
14 years ago
Reply to  MikeS

Batters just love to hammer a good slutter.

0