One Night Only: Game Previews for September 27th
NERD and Frankenstein’s monster have about 0.5 things in common.
New York AL (10) at Tampa Bay (8) | 19:10 ET
NERD v. Nerd
NERD — i.e. the numbers you see here designed to express in one figure the watchability of a team or player or game for the baseballing nerd — is totally trying to embarrass its creator today.
How It’s Doing That
By giving the Yankees-Rays and Red Sox-Orioles contests Game Scores of 9 and 7, respectively, while they (i.e. those games) very clearly feel like some of those most interesting games of the season.
Why That’s Happening, In Reality
The reason why that’s happening — the thing with the lower-than-expected scores — is because Boston’s playoff odds remain at about 63%. Meanwhile, Tampa Bay’s are only about 37%. (All per Cool Standings.)
A Red Sox Fan’s Opinion
Here’s how a Boston fan feels about his team’s chances at the moment:
A Red Sox Fan’s Opinion, Part II
Here’s how a Boston fan feels about nerds at the moment:
MLB.TV Audio Feed: Rays Television.
Two Other Games
Boston (9) at Baltimore (2) | 19:05 ET
This is a soap opera.
MLB.TV Audio Feed: Red Sox Radio or Television.
Los Angeles NL (4) at Arizona (8) | 21:40 ET
Arizona prospect, right-hander Jarrod Parker, deserved a September call-up — and now he’s gotten one of those things.
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 5.3.
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 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Erik Bedard | BOS | 6 | 9 | 7 | 2 | 5 | BAL | Zach Britton | 19:05 |
| Jeanmar Gomez | CLE | 4 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 8 | DET | Max Scherzer | 19:05 |
| Bronson Arroyo | CIN | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 7 | NYN | Chris Capuano | 19:10 |
| Bartolo Colon | NYA | 7 | 10 | 9 | 8 | 3 | TB | Jeremy Hellickson | 19:10 |
| Roy Oswalt | PHI | 5 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 6 | ATL | Derek Lowe | 19:10 |
| John Lannan | WAS | 4 | 5 | 4 | 8 | 5 | FL | Javier Vazquez | 19:10 |
| Jake Westbrook | STL | 3 | 3 | 7 | 4 | 5 | HOU | Henry Sosa | 20:05 |
| Sean O’Sullivan | KC | 0 | 10 | 1 | 0 | 2 | MIN | Anthony Swarzak | 20:10 |
| Ross Ohlendorf | PIT | 4 | 5 | 4 | 8 | 3 | MIL | Randy Wolf | 20:10 |
| Henderson Alvarez | TOR | 9 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 3 | CHA | Mark Buehrle | 20:10 |
| Hiroki Kuroda | LAN | 7 | 4 | 7 | 8 | 10 | AZ | Jarrod Parker* | 21:40 |
| Matt Garza | CHN | 10 | 3 | 6 | 6 | 6 | SD | Anthony Bass* | 22:05 |
| Colby Lewis | TEX | 5 | 9 | 5 | 5 | 5 | LAA | Ervin Santana | 22:05 |
| Trevor Cahill | OAK | 5 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 4 | SEA | Blake Beavan | 22:10 |
| Alex White | SF | 5 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 10 | SF | Madison Bumgarner | 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.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
Carson, see my comment about POFF on the Leaderboards of Pleasure post from yesterday, the Rays & Sox should really be getting bigger POFF adjustments than the Cards.
Yeah, saw that. And it’s true — the playoff-odds adjustments don’t do justice to today’s games.
If I were a “smarter” “person,” this would all be easier.
Yea, it must be a total brain buster to tweak the pOFF variable with a games remaining factor. But maybe you are worried about disrupting the delicate and finely tuned machine that is NERD…
Honestly, why even post it if it’s useless
Bart, if you think it is useless, why did you click on it?
I’m rooting for the three-team wild card frenzy scenario.
except i’m a little late to the show for that. guess i’m rooting for the rays. Hellickson & Price? done deal.
update pNERD
…………………..
WHITE / COL 3…..4…..tonight : 5
coolstandings is woefully wrong. Rays are faves.
Exactly right. Coolstandings isn’t aware that the Boston bullpen is in ruins (and, who are we kidding, the starters too!), and that the Yankees have no vested interest in winning any more baseball games until Friday…
Sorry, a nitpick.
COL is away at SF (it currently reads that SF is playing themselves).
I actually notice Alex White for my (sigh) Rockies.
By the way, has anyone evaluated the much-touted Jimenez trade now that we’re well along in the season? Did the Rox get a good deal after all? Or another season before we’ll know?
Go Cards…
The coolstandings probabilities don’t (shouldn’t and can’t) take into account the “Yankees and Phillies have nothing to play for” adjustment. My feeling is that the real probabilities for the Rays and Braves are a bit higher than the estimates.
The Yankees know they would be better off vs Tampa, so they even have something to play against.
How would they be better off vs Tampa? I know we should avoid 1 month narratives and all, but it is pretty clear that TB pitching = good and BOS pitching = whatever the opposite of good is.
1 month narratives exactly. It’s probably closer to a toss-up than it was on August 29th, but you can’t ignore the rightly superiority of the Boston offense…
The real issue here is not what the playoff probabilities are, but the fact that they are so variable right now, depending on the outcomes of certain games. If a team with a 25% chance of making the playoffs loses a game in July, that probability might drop to 24%. Now, it drops to 12% due to the increased leverage each game now has over that probability. This is of course why these games are so exciting to watch and deserve higher NERD scores.
Of course, coolstandings has no publicly available information with which to quantify this leverage, so this is easier said than done.