As I write this I’m starting at the serious possibility of the Red Sox losing both ends of a doubleheader and ending the day tied with the Rays for the AL Wild Card lead. I don’t need these Matchup Ratings to tell me Tim Wakefield and John Lackey are probably going to suck. Wakefield already did. Lackey likely will. For the tougher matchups to call, here are the Matchup Ratings for tomorrow, Monday, August 26.

A Red Sox-Yankees doubleheader highlights Sunday’s action. The game means very little to the Yankees (other than having the chance to seriously delay/cancel Boston’s playoff party) but it means a lot to the Angels and Rays.

Games on Sunday feature three of the league’s best starters in Clayton Kershaw, Tim Lincecum and Roy Halladay. Kershaw and Lincecum are rated one and two for the day while Halladay slides a bit. You can see the full list of Matchup Ratings for Sunday’s games below.

Our daily email updates go out at 3:00 pm EST each day, so it’s my hope to get these Matchup Ratings out before 3:00 the day before each pitcher is scheduled to start. You can click that link to get these updates, thereby ensuring you don’t miss out on each day’s best and worst starting pitcher matchups.

And today’s (or rather, Saturday’s) list of matchups is interesting to say the least. We’ll get to some notes on what we see from Saturday’s slate of games below, but first, let’s look at the ratings.

Onto those notes:

• Zack Greinke is today’s Matchup of the Day. He’s been fantastic over the last month (1.93 ERA) and is at home facing Alex Sanabia and a struggling Marlins’ offense. If this start goes like his last few, it should be a gem.
• Jerome Williams, Josh Tomlin and Everett Teaford check in at three, five and seven, respectively, by virtue of the fact that they’re facing some of the league’s worst offenses. Williams is going against the Athletics, who are 2-4 in the last week and averaging just 3.3 runs per game over that span. Teaford faces the White Sox, and opposing starter John Danks has an atrocious 9.14 ERA this month. Tomlin is at home, where he has a 3.58 ERA and 1.09 WHIP, and gets to face the Twins.
• Justin Verlander ranks onlysixth on today’s list of best matchups. He’s gotten the win in his last 12 starts, but the Orioles’ offense has been hot of late (6.3 runs per game over the last week). Opposing starter Jeremy Guthrie didn’t help Verlander’s cause, either. Guthrie’s 3.09 ERA in the last month knocked down the Tigers ace’s Matchup Rating a few points. Guthrie might have 17 losses on the year, but he’s won his last three starts against some tough AL East offenses (@TOR, TB, @BOS).
• On a more general note, there are 15 matchups rated as above average for Saturday and 15 rated as below average. Of the 15 above average matchups, nine are a home and six are on the road. The reverse holds true for the 15 below average matchups. That split tells me there’s definitely something to these ratings, but it remains to be seen exactly what correlation there is between a starter’s matchup rating and his performance in the game. I’m collecting and analyzing this data over the season’s final week or so to find any usable trends. Expect these results in a nice, graphical post once the season concludes.

Today is day two of my new Matchup Rating statistic, and we’ve already seen two major weaknesses — handling crazy-high and crazy-low ERAs due to small sample sizes (see: Drew Pomeranz) and finding an accurate way to factor in the opposing starter (because that affects the chances at getting a win). In an effort to correct that, I made a few changes. First, I added another component to the equation that regresses those crazy-high and crazy-low ERAs to the league average if the sample size isn’t large enough. Second, I weighted the opposing starter’s individual rating (calculated before factoring in opponents) as just one-fifth what I was before (since wins are just one of the five main pitching categories).

Our updated list of factors in the Matchup Rating equation is as follows:

• Home/road splits
• LHP/RHP splits
• How well the SP has performed over the last 14 days, 30 days and the whole season
• How well the opponent’s offense has performed over the last 7 days and the whole season
• The opposing starter
• Sample size

Yesterday we had some issues with starters being changed the day before game-time, but that’s a risk we run trying to get these ratings out a day early so you can act on them when making your daily fantasy drop/adds.

Here are the Matchups Ratings for tomorrow, September 23.

Here are some notes on the Matchup Ratings we see above:

• Jered Weaver is Friday’s “Matchup of the Day” with a rating of 17.54. He’s phenomenal at home (1.81 ERA) and has corrected some late-August woes with a more Weaver-like last three starts. He’s also facing the Athletics. His opponent, Gio Gonzalez, has turned in solid starts in three of his last four outings, but his second half has been pretty awful.
• Drew Pomeranz was the day’s highest-rated starter before the innings-pitched adjustment was added. That dropped him to eighth for the day. He’s had two very good starts so far, and he’s facing the Astros.
• Jon Lester had a more negative rating before factoring in his opponent (Freddy Garcia), but his chances at a win against the Yankees (because of Garcia) gave him a few extra points. The Red Sox have been unbelievably terrible in September, but we’ll see if having their ace facing Garcia (and his 7.85 ERA in the last month) helps buoy them.
• I’ll be honest here; Cole Hamels probably shouldn’t have a Matchup Rating lower than his opponents’, R.A. Dickey. Still, Dickey is playing at home and has been very good on the season and very, very good over the last month. Once we get more data we’ll have to look and see if I should factor in the opposing starter less than I currently am, but for now we have nothing but subjective opinion (and, well, logic) to tell us otherwise.