Daily Notes, With Some Potent Minor-League News
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.
1. Potent Minor-League News
2. Notable MLB Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule
Potent Minor-League News
Featuring entirely — perhaps even excessively — fertile news.
Ynoa Pitches 10th Professional Inning
Ben Badler of Baseball America tweets — and is not lying when he notes — that Michael Ynoa, the recipient of a $4.25 million bonus out of the Dominican in 2008 (the largest such bonus for a Latin American amateur at the time), pitched his first competitive inning of the season on Saturday and his 10th as a professional. Here’s (the now 20-year-old) Ynoa’s line from his appearance with the rookie-level AZL Athletics: 1.0 IP, 4 TBF, 1 K, 1 BB, 0 H.
Skaggs Makes Triple-A Debut
Left-hander Tyler Skaggs, ranked 11th among all prospects by our Marc Hulet this preseason, made his Triple-A debut on Sunday, reports Andrew Pentis of MiLB.com. Here’s his line from the start in question: 7.0 IP, 31 TBF, 3 K, 1 BB, 2 HR, 12 H, 9:3 GO:AO. And here’s his line from Double-A Mobile: 69.2 IP, 9.17 K/9, 2.71 BB/9, 1.03 HR/9, 3.60 FIP.
Sheets Signed by Atlanta, Assigned to Double-A Mississippi
The Atlanta Braves signed right-hander Ben Sheets, now 33, to a minor-league deal on Sunday, reports George Henry of the Associated Press. Sheets last pitched for Oakland in 2010, posting this line: 119.1 IP, 16.4% K, 8.4% BB, 44.4% GB, 4.40 SIERA, 102 xFIP-, 0.6 WAR. He had a bananas year in 2004, when he did this: 237.0 IP, 28.2% K, 3.4% BB, 43.3% GB, 2.67 SIERA, 62 xFIP-, 8.0 WAR. After making love to the internet briefly, one finds that, since 2002, Sheets’ WAR from 2004 is the 10th-best season by that measure (among pitchers); his xFIP-, the fifth-best.
Notable MLB Games
Colorado at St. Louis | 20:15 ET
The brazen reader will likely wonder such things as “How the frig could the Rockies have a 10 NERD.” And: “How the frig could Josh Outman have a NERD of 9?” The brazen reader will likely — immediately after wondering such things — render them into electronic print in the comments area of a post much like this one, perhaps attaching some uncomplimentary epithets to the name of the author and/or his made-up stat. What precisely will he say? I don’t know, but the suspense is killing me.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.
Baltimore at Seattle | 22:10 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Of note: Japanese right-hander Hisashi Iwakuma, 31, makes his first major-league start tonight after 14 relief appearances with Seattle. His line so far: 30.1 IP, 18.1% K, 11.8% BB, 56.3% GB, 4.04 SIERA, 102 xFIP-, -0.4 WAR.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Baltimore 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 4.8.
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 | SP | Tm. | Gm. | Tm. | SP | Home | Time | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jered Weaver | LAA | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 0 | CLE | Ubaldo Jimenez | 19:05 |
| Jordan Lyles | HOU | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 6 | PIT | James McDonald | 19:05 |
| Liam Hendriks | MIN | 5 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 7 | DET | Doug Fister | 19:05 |
| Everett Teaford* | KC | 3 | 5 | 3 | 7 | 2 | TOR | Ricky Romero | 19:07 |
| Jeff Samardzija | CHN | 9 | 3 | 6 | 7 | 4 | ATL | Tommy Hanson | 19:10 |
| Freddy Garcia | NYA | 5 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 7 | TB | Matt Moore | 19:10 |
| Carlos Zambrano | MIA | 2 | 2 | 4 | 7 | 9 | MIL | Zack Greinke | 20:10 |
| Josh Outman | COL | 9 | 10 | 7 | 9 | 4 | STL | Kyle Lohse | 20:15 |
| Clayton Richard | SD | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 5 | AZ | Trevor Cahill | 21:40 |
| D. Matsuzaka | BOS | 6 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 4 | OAK | Jarrod Parker | 22:05 |
| Jason Hammel | BAL | 8 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 6 | SEA | Hisashi Iwakuma* | 22:10 |
| Homer Bailey | CIN | 4 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 6 | LAN | Chad Billingsley | 22:10 |
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.
Ubaldo + 0 = can’t comprehend
why do you like josh outman you biased prick
ERA-xFIP=ubaldo/0
His name, it’s beautiful.
LOL
Yankees vs. Rays = 5 game score
Rockies vs. Cards = 7 game score
What?
Regarding the Lack of Redundancy in This Post
This post, unlike most other Daily Notes posts, is not redundant – nor does it contain redundancy, which is upsetting.
Regarding Why This Lack of Redundancy is Upsetting
This lack of redundancy is upsetting because the redundant nature of the typical daily notes post is so redundant, in fact, that this redundancy provides an appreciable amount of comic relief to the otherwise relatively matter-of-fact Daily Notes post.
Is that you, “Sock Puppet”?”
No, but I am honored to be mistaken for someone with such a name.
Honored author of the made-up stat that ranks the Colorado Rockies a 10, can you explain why the made-up stat does so? It is not that the Colorado Rockies are in the thick of a playoff race, or even that they are a collection of baseball players who are particularly good at the sport of baseball, for the former is unequivocally false and the latter is only true by dint of the fact that all major-league baseball players are exceptionally good at the sport of baseball, a fact which can generally be taken for granted when discussing major-league baseball, where we tend to judge major-league baseball players by comparison to other major-league baseball players rather than to the general populace.
It’s their Spd score, mostly. Theirs is, like, a full standard deviation over any other team’s.
Doris Sams has died. Pitched a perfect game in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
Oh man, I wish my jerky posts hadn’t followed such sad news. RIP Doris and I hope your memory is a blessing to your family.
Tommy Hanson a 4? What the Sheets is that?
[Sorry, I forgot] Author, your podcasts sound like a Vachel Lindsey poem read out over a minor league public address system by Ben Stein, and your Nerd Score makes as much sense as a Peacock, or having Well Beered Englishmen shooting Indians in 1943 in the name of world freedom; probably less, and possibly much less, sense.