Daily Notes: Night of Precisely One-Thousand Rookie Starters

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.

1. Night of Precisely One-Thousand Rookie Starters
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Night of Precisely One-Thousand Rookie Starters
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post is to alert the readership to how either exactly one-thousand or at least ten rookie pitchers are starting tonight for their respective teams.

Table: Tonight’s Rookie Starters
Utilizing the invaluable custom leaderboard feature as this site, the author has produced the following, i.e. a table of this season’s stats for the nine starters who (a) have recorded fewer than 50 career innings, (b) are pitching tonight, and also (c) have recorded at least an inning prior to tonight:

Rank Name Team G GS IP TBF K% BB% GB% BABIP ERA- FIP- xFIP- WAR
1 Shelby Miller Cardinals 15 15 92.0 363 27.8% 5.5% 37.0% .277 64 74 82 2.3
2 Julio Teheran Braves 14 14 89.1 373 19.0% 4.3% 42.1% .303 88 102 101 1.0
3 T.J. McFarland Orioles 18 0 41.1 183 19.7% 7.7% 53.8% .310 100 87 91 0.4
4 Gerrit Cole Pirates 3 3 18.1 74 10.8% 1.4% 48.4% .270 93 87 102 0.3
5 Alex Colome Rays 2 2 10.0 47 21.3% 14.9% 46.7% .333 0 82 110 0.2
6 Martin Perez Rangers 2 2 12.1 53 9.4% 5.7% 37.8% .295 84 93 105 0.2
7 Randall Delgado D-backs 3 2 14.0 59 22.0% 1.7% 54.5% .357 112 104 66 0.1
8 Trevor Bauer Indians 3 3 16.1 71 15.5% 21.1% 39.5% .182 70 135 151 0.0
9 Allen Webster Red Sox 3 3 12.0 59 20.3% 10.2% 42.5% .400 265 194 122 -0.3

Additionally, Regarding Hellweg
The one rookie starter absent from the list above, Milwaukee right-hander Johnny Hellweg, makes his major-leauge debut tonight.

Regarding Johnny Hellweg, Some Basic Information
Taken by the Angels in the 16th round of the 2008 draft out of Florida College, the right-handed Hellweg is most notable for his height (6-foot-9), his fastball (he sits at 94-97 mph), and for how the Brewers acquired him (along with Ariel Pena and Jean Segura in the trade that sent Zack Greinke to Anaheim).

Regarding Johnny Hellweg, His Place on Various Prospect Lists
Here’s where Hellweg appeared this preseason on various and notable organizational prospect lists for Milwaukee:

Baseball America: 6th.
Baseball Prospects: 3rd.
Bullpen Banter: 4th.
Marc Hulet: 6th.
John Sickels: 5th.

Regarding Hellweg, His Performance This Year
While Hellweg has been rather excellent this year in terms of actual run prevention, having recorded a 2.82 ERA over 76.2 innings in the very difficult Pacific Coast League, his defense-independent numbers suggest that he’s unlikely to reproduce those same numbers in the future. To wit: 76.2 IP, 5.87 K/9, 5.17 BB/9, 0.35 HR/9, 4.48 FIP. That said, data from both Minor League Central and StatCorner suggest that Hellweg’s ground-ball rate has sat in the high-50% area as a minor-league, indicating that the some manner of home-run prevention is probable.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
San Francisco at Colorado | 20:40 ET
Barry Zito (86.0 IP, 120 xFIP-, 0.9 WAR) faces Jhoulys Chacin (87.1 IP, 106 xFIP-, 2.3 WAR). Of note: recently promoted outfielder Corey Dickerson has been quite productive, having recorded three hits and a pair of walks in his first 12 major-league plate appearances.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

Today’s Complete Schedule
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 5.9.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away   SP Tm. Gm. Tm. SP   Home Time
Trevor Bauer* CLE 7 7 6 1 6 CHA Hector Santiago 17:10
Carlos Carrasco* CLE 8 7 6 1 4 CHA Jose Quintana Gm 2
Johnny Hellweg* MIL 8 5 8 7 9 PIT Gerrit Cole* 19:05
David Phelps NYA 4 4 6 9 7 BAL T.J. McFarland* 19:05
Max Scherzer DET 10 7 8 7 7 TB Alex Colome* 19:10
Edinson Volquez SD 3 8 4 0 4 MIA Ricky Nolasco 19:10
Josh Johnson TOR 7 6 7 8 7 BOS Allen Webster* 19:10
Ross Detwiler WAS 4 2 6 5 10 NYN Matt Harvey 19:10
Randall Delgado* AZ 7 3 7 7 7 ATL Julio Teheran 19:30
Johnny Cueto CIN 8 4 7 3 7 TEX Martin Perez* 20:05
Jerome Williams LAA 5 7 4 3 3 HOU Bud Norris 20:10
James Shields KC 6 5 4 2 1 MIN P.J. Walters 20:10
Barry Zito SF 2 7 5 9 5 COL Jhoulys Chacin 20:40
Shelby Miller STL 10 4 7 6 5 OAK Bartolo Colon 22:05
Travis Wood CHN 4 5 6 4 8 SEA Hisashi Iwakuma 22:10
John Lannan PHI 4 1 3 2 4 LAN Chris Capuano 22:10

To learn how Pitcher and Team NERD Scores are calculated, 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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Luke Sonnet
10 years ago

Oof, that Detriot Tigers matchup against Detroit looks like a great game!

Ian R.
10 years ago
Reply to  Luke Sonnet

Hey, the Tigers are guaranteed to win.

Intrasquad games in June – the new market inefficiency?

JAL
10 years ago

Carson, out of curiosity why the 6 for Uncle Jimmy Shields? Thanks