Daily Notes, With News About News About News
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.
1. News About News About News
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule
News About News About News
At Daily Notes, we don’t make the news — we copy and paste the news from other sources and then change maybe, like, every tenth word or whatever.
Oakland Prospect Choice Out for Season
Oakland outfield prospect Michael Choice was placed on the disabled list on Tuesday, and will miss the remainder of the 2012 season after suffering a broken hand from a hit-by-pitch on Saturday night, reports MLB.com John Parker. Choice, who was ranked second among Oakland prospects before the season by our Marc Hulet, produced one of the more impressive offensive performances of the Arizona Fall League, per a stat made up by the author. He was slashing .287/.356/.423 (.352 BABIP) in 402 plate appearances at Double-A Midland at the time of the injury.
White Sox Prospect Mitchell Promoted Tuesday
Former first-round pick and current Chicago White Sox outfield prospect Jared Mitchell — notable both for his (a) raw athleticism and (b) difficulties with making contact — was promoted by the club from Double-A Birmingham to Triple-A Charlotte on Tuesday, reports Toni Ginnetti of the Chicago Sun-Times. After missing all of 2010 with an ankle injury and posting decidedly underwhelming numbers in 2011 at High-A Winston-Salem, Mitchell (now 23) was slashing .240/.368/.440 (.350 BABIP) in Birmingham, with a 15.2% walk and 30.9% strikeout rate.
Hernandez (né Carmona) to Make First Appearance Since You-Know-What
According to MLB.com’s Justin Albers, the Cleveland Indians announced Tuesday that right-hander Roberto Hernandez (whom the reader will know as Fausto Carmona) will make his first appearance — a start for Low-A affiliate Lake County on Thursday night — since You-Know-What happened. “He hasn’t pitched in an affiliated game since that thing we all know about happened,” Indians manager Manny Acta didn’t actually say. Nor did he continue: “When things like that one thing that happened happen — well, who knows what happens next.”
Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Minnesota at Chicago AL | 14:10 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Only barely related, but something the author just saw at Dunn’s player page: in 2009, then-National Adam Dunn posted a 142 wRC+ over 668 plate appearances and yet managed just a 1.1 WAR.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Minnesota Radio.
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 4.5.
Note: the following Game Scores include the poorly conceived playoff-odds adjustment discussed in a recent edition of Daily Notes. Also note: the following table is entirely sortable.
| Away | Â | SP | Tm. | Gm. | Tm. | SP | Â | Home | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stephe. Strasburg | WAS | 10 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 6 | NYN | Jeremy Hefner | 12:10 |
| Ryan Dempster | CHN | 6 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 2 | PIT | Kevin Correia | 12:35 |
| Tommy Hanson | ATL | 4 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 4 | MIA | Ricky Nolasco | 12:40 |
| Marco Estrada | MIL | 9 | 7 | 5 | 6 | 6 | PHI | Vance Worley | 13:05 |
| Nick Blackburn | MIN | 1 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 6 | CHA | Jake Peavy | 14:10 |
| Luke Hochevar | KC | 5 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 4 | LAA | Jered Weaver | 15:35 |
| Ivan Nova | NYA | 7 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 4 | SEA | Hisashi Iwakuma | 15:40 |
| Jason Marquis | SD | 3 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 7 | SF | Tim Lincecum | 15:45 |
| Max Scherzer | DET | 10 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 1 | CLE | Derek Lowe | 19:05 |
| David Price | TB | 9 | 5 | 6 | 1 | 7 | BAL | Miguel Gonzalez | 19:05 |
| A.J. Griffin | OAK | 5 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 2 | TOR | Ricky Romero | 19:07 |
| Josh Beckett | BOS | 6 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 5 | TEX | Derek Holland | 20:05 |
| Homer Bailey | CIN | 6 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 6 | HOU | Bud Norris | 20:05 |
| Aaron Harang | LAN | 2 | 1 | 5 | 9 | 4 | STL | Kyle Lohse | 20:15 |
| Jeff Francis | COL | 5 | 9 | 5 | 8 | 5 | AZ | Trevor Cahill | 21:40 |
To learn more about Pitcher and Team NERD scores click here.
To learn how Game NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.
I’m surprised at the lack of a mention of Max(well) Scherzer in a featured game. I look forward to your musings pertaining to our favorite heterochromia iridis-afflicted pitcher every fifth day.
Finally I find someone getting the gender right and using né instead of née for a man, and yet I still can’t revel in it. Né/née indicates one’s name at birth, which Carmona specifically is not. Now where am I going to find joy in this dreary, dreary day? That was my one chance, Carson Cistulli, my one chance and you ruined it!
You stole the words right out of my bouche.
That link to Adam Dunn’s page made me interested in seeing who has the worst fielding ratings over some time. Looks like only Dunn and Hawpe have had anywhere near that poor of seasons. His 09 -37.1 and 08 -30.7 are absolutely amazing. Hawpe sat between those scores in 08, with a rating of -36.0. No one else since 2000 has had a score worse than -30. It’s tough to be that bad at fielding and still get put out there everyday.
It’s crazy that Bernie Williams came really close while not even managing 550 plate appearances.
Dr Caligari,
I have had a single bottle of brew in the past 18 days. I consider this a monstrous personal crisis.
Well, if it makes you feel better, I have a 12 pack of godawful swill to drink. I have had a couple of good beers (Oberon Ale tonight, and Great Lakes Brewing’s Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, which was very good), but I have to find a way to dispose of this Leinenkugel’s Sunset Wheat ale. It was given to me, but it’s just not good. It has a blueberry flavor that overpowers the beer itself. I even like blueberries and this is bad.
Just be happy that you aren’t stuck with anything this nasty. Best of luck in ending your drought, however.
This weekend my mates and I are converging on Austin for a Cider Weekend. Someone’s bringing every known variety of Crispin and I’m rounding up what English imports I can find (Aspall, for one; no chance of Old Rosie sadly). Any tips on things we must try?
And thanks for the word on the Sunset Wheat. I prefer my blueberry sins in pancake form.
Sadly, I’m not all that well-versed in ciders. I don’t even know of that many mid-western breweries that make a cider. Crispin and Woodchuck are probably the only ones that are reasonably easy to find in the U.S. My preferred store has a decent selection of ciders, but they are almost all either English or Irish, and you’re surely more informed than me about those.
And I agree completely that blueberries should be reserved for things like pancakes (or occasionally doughnuts) rather than beer.
Wow, and I thought Ryan Braun’s offense/defense dichotomy was bad. 492 PA, 155 wRC+, 3.1 WAR. It’s even funnier if you use bWAR: 1.8 for Braun, -0.6 for Dunn.