Yu Darvish makes his second Major League start in one of eight games scheduled to begin before midnight UK time on Saturday. All times are in BST.
18.05. LA Angels at NY Yankees (Wilson – Hughes)
18.05. Chicago Cubs at St. Louis (Volstad – Lynn)
18.10. Texas at Minnesota (Darvish – Blackburn) * ESPN America
21.05. Tampa Bay at Boston (Hellickson – Buchholz)
21.05. Cincinnati at Washington (Bailey – Jackson)
21.05. NY Mets at Philadelphia (Niese – Worley)
21.07. Baltimore at Toronto (Hammel – Alvarez)
21.10. Detroit at Chicago White Sox (Wilk – Floyd)
Darvish had a shaky 42-pitch first inning in his Major League debut against Seattle on Monday, but he settled down from then on and at least gave the Rangers 5.2 innings of work. With first-start nerves out of the way, Darvish will look to impress against the Twins at Target Field. The Rangers won the first game of the three-game series on Friday 4-1 to improve their early season record to 6-2.
The early games also give us a chance to watch two of the three most in-form teams of the moment. The Dodgers, Yankees and Nationals have each won their last four games and the latter two are in action early on Saturday.
Phil Hughes takes to the mound at Yankee Stadium against the Angels hoping to follow-up Hiroki Kuroda’s impressive pitching performance from yesterday, while Edwin Jackson makes his first home start in a Nationals uniform today against the Reds. Jackson allowed three runs over five innings in his last start against the Mets. The Nationals should be in a buoyant mood after their extra-inning walk-off win on Friday.
The Dodgers don’t begin their game against the Padres until 2.10 a.m.; however they’re a team worth losing sleep over (in a good way) at the moment. They have a Major League best 7-1 record and when Aaron Harang is reeling off nine consecutive strike-outs for you (on his way to a total of 13), as he did yesterday, things are definitely going your way.
It’s also a great relief to see the Rays’ Jeremy Hellickson in line to make his scheduled start today. Hellickson ended up in hospital after being hit in the head by a batted ball during batting practice on Wednesday. Thankfully he came out of what could have been a very serious incident relatively unscathed.
All of these games are available to watch live via the MLB.TV subscription at MLB.com. ESPN America is showing the Rangers-Twins game from 18.00. The full schedule for today’s games can be found on MLB.com.
