Game of the Day (8/3/84)

Braves 2, Giants 1 (11). San Francisco's Mark Davis was about to be permanently moved to the bullpen, and pitched most of 1984 like he deserved it. (The move worked out OK.) Atlanta's Pascual Perez was in the middle of a solid season, but would start on an extraordinarily terrible one six months later.

Game of the Day (8/2/14)

Padres 3, Braves 2 (12). Atlanta's Ervin Santana and San Diego's Ian Kennedy are both right-handed starters in their late-prime type years (Kennedy is 29, Santana 31), who have career ERA+ figures of exactly 100 and are within a few points of that mark this year. So it would seem fair to classify this as a pretty even pitching matchup.

Game of the Day (8/2/84)

Cubs 3, Expos 2. Montreal's starter was Bryn Smith, who was having a pretty good year for a 29-year-old first-time full-time rotation member. In this game, however, he was matched against Chicago's Rick Sutcliffe, who in 9 starts with his new team was 7-1 with a 2.49 ERA.

Game of the Day (8/1/14)

White Sox 10, Twins 8. I've seen a good number of highly-unbalanced pitching matchups in these games, but this one may take the cake. Minnesota opened with Logan Darnell, a 25-year-old lefty making his second big league start after what looks like a decent-but-unspectacular minor league career. Chicago also started a southpaw who was born a quarter century ago - but theirs was Chris Sale, one of the best pitchers in baseball.

Game of the Day (8/1/84)

Braves 6, Astros 5. Houston's Joe Niekro, who led the NL in starts in both 1983 and '84, faced Atlanta's Rick Mahler, who headed the same category in 1985 and '86. They may not have pitched brilliantly in those seasons (although they certainly weren't bad), but they sure did pitch frequently.

Game of the Day (7/31/14)

Trade deadline day was, of course, highly eventful in off-field ways, with Jon Lester, David Price, and a host of lesser players changing teams. It was also a good day on the field, with over half of its 11 games landing in the 70th percentile or higher on the season so far. That added up to a status as one of the best non-full-slate days of the season.

Unsurprisingly, the best game was also the only one to last beyond regulation: Angels 1, Orioles 0 (13), which began with LA's Tyler Skaggs and Baltimore's Bud Norris on the mound.

Game of the Day (7/31/84)

Rangers 7, Orioles 6. Texas's Dave Stewart and Baltimore's Dennis Martinez were both pretty unimpressive in 1984, and would be for the next couple of seasons as well. Given their ages (not old, but not young), you'd figure they were both on their way out of the league. Instead, Stewart would go on to four straight 20-win seasons in his early 30's, and Martinez would capture an ERA title at age 37.