One Night Only: Hot Game Previews for April 19th

Will Justin Upton continue his assault on regional purveyors of fast food?

This edition of One Night Only contains:

1. Previews for four games, all featuring Flawless Information™ — that is, sexy, updated Team NERD scores and sexy, updated ZiPS projections.

2. A complete table of those same Team NERD scores, now with totally infallible UZRs.

3. A video you can watch at home or office.

Arizona (10) at Cincinnati (10) | 7:10pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Diamondbacks: Armando Galarraga
154.0 IP, 5.90 K/9, 3.33 BB/9, 5.39 FIP

Reds: Sam LeCure
140.0 IP, 7.20 K/9, 3.66 BB/9, 4.35 FIP

Notes
• Only three teams rate perfectly by NERD’s exacting standards, and these are two of them. (Or is it two of they?)
• For the Diamondbacks, their best thing is how their bullpen is stupid good (now at a collective 2.80 xFIP — as compared to the league average of 4.05).
• A sampling from same: Juan Gutierrez (7.2 IP, 1.36 xFIP), J.J. Putz (6.0, 1.36), Kam Mickolio (5.0, 2.42).
• For the Reds, their best thing is how they have the second-best offense in all of baseball, at 17.0 weighted runs above average.
• That includes the best Joey Votto in all of baseball, of course.

A Recent Call-Up for the Diamondbacks
A recent call-up for the Diamondbacks is Joshua Collmenter. The 25-year-old Collmenter is notable for being a marginal prospect and for having an Arizona Fall League that saw him finish second on the SCOUT pitching leaderboard. As Eno Sarris showed us late last fall, he’s also notable for a delivery that might be best described as “max effort,” “hard to repeat,” or “a case study in self-abuse.”

Regard:

Three Other Games
Milwaukee (4) at Philadelphia (3) | 7:05pm ET
• Roy Halladay pitches tonight.
• Somehow he’s managed to improve his ZiPS projection already, from a preseason FIP projection of 3.03 to a rest-of-season mark of 2.89.
• His numbers so far: 22.0 IP, 9.00 K/9, 1.23 BB/9, .283 BABIP, 44.1 GB%, 0.0% HR/FB 2.73 xFIP, 1.0 WAR.

Houston (3) at New York Nationals (1) | 7:10pm ET
• I wouldn’t generally advocate this game, owing to the low scores of both teams.
• That said both Wandy Rodriguez (16.0 IP, 7.31 ERA, 3.94 xFIP) and Jonathon Niese (17.0 IP, 6.88 ERA, 3.50 xFIP) have been entirely molested by bad luck.
• Behold, regression!

Cleveland (10) at Kansas City (9) | 8:10pm ET
• Jeanmar Gomez versus Bruce Chen doesn’t seem like a great draw.
• Then again, Kyle Davies versus Carlos Carrasco didn’t really either, and last night’s game was actually pretty great.
• Last thing. Cleveland’s first four batters are all clearly excellent: Grady Sizemore, Asdrubal Cabrera, Shin-Soo Choo, and Carlos Santana.

Complete and Updated Team NERD Table
Totally Unnecessary Subtitle in Bold

Here are your updated Team NERD scores, now with very early defensive numbers.