Daily Notes: Presenting the Season Debut of NERD
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.
1. Important Announcement: NERD Is Now Available
2. Featured Game: Arizona at Miami, 12:40 ET
3. All of Today’s Games
Important Announcement: NERD Is Now Available
Important Announcement
There’s an important announcement everyone needs to hear and it’s that NERD, in all its forms, is now available for the 2012 season.
Regarding What Is NERD
NERD is the result of an attempt to represent numerically the likely aesthetic appeal of a pitcher, team, game, etc. to the baseball nerd (i.e. you, reading this). Specifically, NERD is a score (on a 0-10 scale) given to pitchers, teams, games, etc. that’s calculated using metrics available here at the site. When pitcher and team scores are combined in game scores, it’s possible to approximate, with at least some accuracy, which games might be of greatest (or least) interest to the baseball nerd.
Regarding How NERD Is Calculated
The formulae for the various NERD scores for 2012 remain mostly unchanged from the iterations that appeared in the One Night Only game previews at the end of last season. Follow these links for the relevant information: Pitcher NERD (scroll down a little), Team NERD.
Regarding NERD Leaderboards
Readers will be able to view NERD leaderboards and laggardboards — along with some notes on minor changes to the weighting and calculation of NERD — in the season debut, this afternoon, of the Leaderboards of Pleasure.
Featured Game: Arizona at Miami, 12:40 ET
Regarding Why This Game Is Notable
This game is notable, most of all, because it represents the major-league debut, for Arizona, of left-handed pitching prospect Patrick Corbin.
What FanGraphs Says About Patrick Corbin
FanGraphs prospect analyst Marc Hulet ranked Corbin, 22, fifth in the Arizona system prior to the season, writing that “the southpaw has a solid repertoire — 87-92 mph fastball, slider, changeup — that plays up because of his ability to command all three pitches.”
What Baseball America Says About Patrick Corbin
Baseball America was slightly less optimistic regarding Corbin, ranking him ninth among Diamondbacks rookie-eligible minor leaguers in their preseason Prospect Handbook and profiling him as a future No. 4 starter.
What John Sickels Says About Patrick Corbin
Like Hulet, John Sickels ranked Corbin fifth in the Arizona system. Like Hulet, he also notes/noted that Corbin is less celebrated than other left-hander Tyler Skaggs, who also came to Arizona in the trade that sent Dan Haren to the Angels.
Regarding Patrick Corbin’s Line So Far This Year
This is Corbin’s line from Double-A Mobile so far this year: 27.0 IP, 8.33 K/9, 2.67 BB/9, 0.00 HR/9, 2.35 FIP.
Regarding Patrick Corbin’s ZiPS Projection
This is Patrick Corbin’s ZiPS projection (all innings as a starter): 6.22 K/9, 3.01 BB/9, 1.22 HR/9, 4.61 FIP.
On Who’s Pitching for Miami
Mark Buehrle pitches for Miami. Line: 27.1 IP, 14.7% K, 2.8% BB, 44.6% GB, 3.91 SIERA, 108 xFIP-, 0.4 WAR.
Regarding the Camera Angle at Marlins Park (Or Whatever It’s Called)
The center-field camera angle at Marlins Park (or whatever it’s called) is excellent. Here’s photographic evidence: merp.
Broadcast Information
Marlins Television at 12:40 ET (MLB.TV).
All of Today’s Games
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. Note that Game Scores are an average of Pitcher and Team scores with the latter weighted three times as heavily. Also note that the following table is, like, 110% sortable.
The average NERD Game Score for today is 4.9.
| Away | SP | Tm. | Gm. | Tm. | SP | Home | Time | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patrick Corbin* | AZ | 10 | 7 | 7 | 3 | 4 | MIA | Mark Buehrle | 12:40 |
| Jason Hammel | BAL | 8 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 4 | NYA | Hiroki Kuroda | 19:05 |
| Chris Volstad | CHN | 5 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 6 | PHI | Vance Worley | 19:05 |
| Luke Hochevar | KC | 3 | 9 | 5 | 3 | 6 | DET | Duane Below* | 19:05 |
| Yu Darvish | TEX | 5 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 4 | TOR | Kyle Drabek | 19:07 |
| Tommy Milone | OAK | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 | BOS | Clay Buchholz | 19:10 |
| James McDonald | PIT | 1 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 7 | ATL | Mike Minor | 19:10 |
| Felix Hernandez | SEA | 6 | 3 | 4 | 7 | 1 | TB | Jeremy Hellickson | 19:10 |
| R.A. Dickey | NYN | 10 | 2 | 7 | 7 | 6 | HOU | Bud Norris | 20:05 |
| Aaron Harang | LAN | 5 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 5 | COL | Juan Nicasio | 20:40 |
| Randy Wolf | MIL | 0 | 6 | 4 | 6 | 7 | SD | Joe Wieland* | 22:05 |
| Nick Blackburn* | MIN | 3 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 5 | LAA | C.J. Wilson | 22:05 |
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.
I don’t care what that says, I’m starting Hellickson over Hernandez.
“NERD is the result of an attempt to represent numerically the likely aesthetic appeal of a pitcher, team, game, etc. to the baseball nerd (i.e. you, reading this).”
Or not reading this.
R.A. Dickey is more watchable than King Felix?
Do the NERD scores have a fudge factor that artificially weights knuckleballers by 3 points?
Yeah, the adjustment is knuckleball percentage times five — so about 4.1 for Dickey.
He’d actually be doing pretty well without it, though. He has one of the highest strike percentages in the majors right now (68.1%, ca. 1.6 standard deviations above league average).
In any watchibility ranking, knuckleballers will pretty much always win.
Cistulli,
Far be it for me to suggest that you could improve your style, however I would like to suggest an improvement to the style applied by the cascading sheets on this webpage.
If you were to request that your code monkey add the ‘cursor: pointer;’ style to the “th”s on your table of scores, the reader would more easily discover its inherit sortability.
Regards,
A concerned nerd
hello , j aime cette rubrique . ( i like this article )
PN NERD 2011 ( et oui j ai tout noté )
BUEHRLE 3………………..this day 4…………………+1
CORBIN……………………………………………………rookie
HAMMEL 2…………………..8………………………….+6 ( whaouuuuuuu ! )
KURODA 7…………………..4………………………….-3 ( arf ! )
VOLSTAD 7………………….5…………………………..-2
WORLEY 6……………………6…………………………..0 ………..the same nerd
si vous voulez la suite , je peux le faire !
do you want ?
yes
ou “oui” :)
Texas has a Team Nerd of 10. Cool stuff. Not that NERD really means anything to anyone but the guy that created it. I mean, I’m not exactly trying to get on the waiting list to see the Royals play. Or the Astros/Bud Norris.
…or Jason Hammel.
Poor, poor Randy Wolf. Will there be a Laggardboard of Existential Despair?
Yo, what happened to the radio rankings, Carson? “C” is not the first letter in the alphabet.
Tomorrow! It returns!
Great, Carson. Now you need to find a way to continue to indicate the MLBTV Free Game of the Day on your chart. You know, for the starving student types! Today is NYN@HOU.
Yep, returns tomorrow. No problem.
hey! where’s the reference to this games “free” mlb.com game?! i loved that feature