One Night Only: Hot Game Previews for April 18th

At least Nick Punto could fly.

Today’s edition of One Night Only contains:

1. Previews of two games, with sexy, updated Team NERD scores and sexy, updated ZiPS projections.

2. Notes on a third game you shouldn’t watch.

3. A poll on what’s the most depressing thing about the current iteration of the Twins.

Cleveland (9) at Kansas City (9) | 8:10pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Indians: Carlos Carrasco
180.2 IP, 6.58 K/9, 3.34 BB/9, 4.30 FIP

Royals: Kyle Davies
181.0 IP, 6.22 K/9, 4.03 BB/9, 4.39 FIP

Regarding the Youth of These Teams
The Indians and Royals have featured the league’s two youngest lineups so far this season, at 26.6 and 27.0 years old, respectively.

Regard, from Cleveland: Michael Brantley (24), Asdrubal Cabrera (25), Carlos Santana (25), Matt LaPorta (26).

Now regard some more, from Kansas City: Alcides Escobar (24), Billy Butler (25), Melky Cabrera (26), Jeff Francoeur (27), Chris Getz (27), Alex Gordon (27), Kila Ka’aihue (27).

Some Notes on That
• Regardless of his age, it’s maybe hard to make Melky Cabrera seem very exciting. (Except for this and this, that is.)
• The same likely goes for Jeff Francoeur.
• In an ideal world, the age numbers would be weighted by production in addition to/instead of just plate appearances.
• In an ideal workd, a lot of things’d be different, buddy.
• Last thing: Jeff Francoeur and Alex Gordon actually are — but don’t seem to be — the same age.

Hey, It’s Grady Sizemore!
Frigging Grady Sizemore played baseball yesterday, hit his first major-league home run since August of 2009, and didn’t fall over in pain even once. He’s likely to play today, as well.

In the event that you’ve forgotten — or never knew in the first place — Sizemore was absolutely one of the best major leaguers from 2005 to ’08. Consider this WAR Grid as evidence (click to embiggen):

San Francisco (6) at Colorado (9) | 8:40pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Giants: Tim Lincecum
213.1 IP, 10.42 K/9, 2.87 BB/9, 2.56 FIP

Rockies: Esmil Rogers
142.0 IP, 6.34 K/9, 3.49 BB/9, 4.01 FIP

Tim Lincecum’s Repertoire
Matthew Carruth of both FanGraphs and Lookout Landing provides series previews for the Mariners at the latter of those two sites. As part of those previews, he gives statistically based scouting reports on the probable starting pitchers for each of the series’ games.

For each pitch, Carruth looks at the swinging strikes, overall strike percentage, and ground-ball rate that said pitch induces. He expresses each rating on the 20-80 scouting scale, where league average is 50, 80 is super good, and 20 is, as my brother and sisters in So Cal would say, “totally gnar-gnar.”

In any case, here’s Lincecum’s repertoire by that measure (from 2008 to present):

Pitch	%	Sp	K	BB	GB
FA	53%	93	65	60	55
CH	18%	83	80	75	75
CV	14%	78	50	45	45
SL	8%	84	80	60	75
SI	5%	91	45	30	45
Overall	--	--	80	60	65

Some observations:
• Lincecum’s changeup is very close to perfect.
• There might be some general classification error between Lincecum’s curve and slider. Both BIS and PitchFx are showing considerably more slider usage, considerably less curve usage.
• That could just be a change that Lincecum’s actually making, too.

Minnesota (0) at Baltimore (3) | 7:05pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Twins: Francisco Liriano
180.1 IP, 8.58 K/9, 3.49 BB/9, 3.55 FIP

Orioles: Chris Tillman
159.1 IP, 6.10 K/9, 3.33 BB/9, 4.78 FIP

Warning
Don’t watch this game!

Why
Because these teams — the Twins, in particular — might make your life worse!

Science
If there’s one thing that contemporary marketing philosophy has shown us, it’s that polls are infallible… and fun! With that in mind, let’s try collectively to find the answer to what makes this current iteration of the Minnesota Twins so miserable!