Andrew's Musings

MLB: What to watch on July 14, 2026

Here are today's MLB games, ordered by watchability, based on how interesting the teams and starting pitchers look. Higher is better. For more information, read this post.

Score Time (PT) Visitors Score Home Score Starter (V) Score Starter (H) Score
10.1 5:00p [American League All-Stars](https://www.fangraphs.com/teams/american league all-stars/stats) 0.0 [National League All-Stars](https://www.fangraphs.com/teams/national league all-stars/stats) 0.0 Dylan Cease 10.3 Cristopher Sánchez 10.0

Notes:

Detail

American League All-Stars @ National League All-Stars, 5:00p

Summary

The All-Star Game rarely doubles as an actual pitching duel, but this one does, pairing two legitimate Cy Young-caliber arms in Philadelphia's own ballpark. Cristopher Sánchez gets the ball for the NL at Citizens Bank Park as the 29-year-old recently earned his second career All-Star selection, and this will mark his first starting assignment in the Midsummer Classic, becoming the first Phillies pitcher to start the All-Star Game since Roy Halladay in 2011. Across the diamond, Dylan Cease starts for the AL after signing a seven-year, $210 million contract with Toronto and posting a 1.73 ERA with 56 strikeouts over six starts since returning from a hamstring strain, and he nearly threw his second career no-hitter Wednesday against San Francisco before it was broken up in the ninth inning. Both pNERD scores sit comfortably above 9.9, built on absurd xFIP- marks and elite swinging-strike rates, making this a rare exhibition where the stuff matches the stage. Team NERD is understandably a wash here — it's an All-Star roster, not a real team — so this one's entirely about watching two of baseball's best arms attack lineups stacked with the game's best hitters, exhibition stakes or not.

(A model from Anthropic generated the above text using instructions, the NERD scores, and these sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.)

Dylan Cease, American League All-Stars

xFIP- SwStr% Strike% Velocity Age Pace Luck KN% C Total
Raw stat 62 15.0% 62.4% 97.4 mph 30 19.1s 0 0.0%
Z-score -2.16 2.04 -0.59 1.48 0.32 0.09
pNERD 4.33 1.02 -0.29 1.48 0.00 -0.05 0.00 0.00 3.80 10.29

Cristopher Sánchez, National League All-Stars

xFIP- SwStr% Strike% Velocity Age Pace Luck KN% C Total
Raw stat 62 15.1% 67.8% 95.2 mph 29 20.1s -1 0.0%
Z-score -2.16 2.08 1.63 0.46 0.06 0.92
pNERD 4.33 1.04 0.82 0.46 0.00 -0.46 0.00 0.00 3.80 9.98

Go back to top of page