To the delight of no fewer than tens of people, today marked the season’s first edition of the author’s highly proprietary and also useless NERD scores. NERD, to quote that inaugural post, “represents an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game.”

Within today’s edition of those NERD scores, one finds that Mets right-hander Dillon Gee receives a score of 9 — higher, it would seem, than certain readers might have expected.

Indeed, Gee’s 5.60 ERA (163 ERA-, if you prefer the park- and league-adjusted version) doesn’t immediately suggest watchability. The fielding-independent numbers (16.4% K, 4.1% BB, 58.9% GB, 88 xFIP-) have been much better, however. But what has really distinguished Gee from his peers thus far has been a combination of his pace between pitches and his overall strike rate.

Consider the following table. Pace denotes average time (in seconds) between pitches. Stk% denotes the percentage of all pitches which have been strikes. The column headings preceded by a z denote the z-scores by those particular metrics as compared to all starters who’ve recorded 10 or more innings. Avg denotes the average of the relevant z-scores.

What one finds is that Gee has produced both (a) the third-lowest pace mark and also (b) the absolute highest strike rate among the 145 pitchers included in this sample. The distanced between the average of his z-scores and second-place Max Scherzer‘s is the equal to the difference between second-place Max Scherzer’s and 20th-place Jacob deGrom’s. Put succinctly, no one — including commissioner Rob Manfred — is doing more to hasten along baseball games than the Mets right-hander.