Monday is Labor Day in the States. That means we have a bumper crop of 13 day-games that can be watched during the British evening to start the week, followed by a further six early games combined over Wednesday and Thursday.

 Monday’s games include an excellent match-up from the AL East as aces will collide at Tropicana Field in the form of CC Sabathia and James Shields. The Phillies are starting to show some decent form, so they should prove to be a tough opponent for the Cincinnati Reds and Johnny Cueto, who is looking for his National League leading 18th win of the season.

The two major series on the west coast see the Giants hosting the D-Backs and the A’s hosting the Angels.  Oakland had won nine games in a row heading into their game on Monday.

There should be some good pitchers on show in the early games on Wednesday. Roy Halladay is scheduled to start for the Phillies, R.A. Dickey and Adam Wainwright are matched against each other in St. Louis, Jake Peavy starts for the White Sox against the Twins and Dan Haren faces one of his former teams.

There are only five MLB games in total on Thursday, two starting before midnight U.K. time, with most three-game series running from Monday to Wednesday this week.

All times are in BST.

Monday 3 September

18.05. Cleveland at Detroit (Kluber – Sanchez)
18.05. Chicago Cubs at Washington (Samardzija – Detwiler)
18.07. Baltimore at Toronto (Saunders – Happ)
18.10. Colorado at Atlanta (Chatwood – Medlen)
18.10. Philadelphia at Cincinnati (Cloyd – Cueto) *ESPN America
18.10. Milwaukee at Miami (Fiers – Nolasco)
18.10. NY Yankees at Tampa Bay (Sabathia – Shields)
18.35. Houston at Pittsburgh (Gonzalez – Locke)
19.10. Texas at Kansas City (Darvish – Chen)
19.15. NY Mets at St. Louis (McHugh – Kelly)
21.05. LA Angels at Oakland (Wilson – Milone)
21.05. Arizona at San Francisco (Corbin – Zito)
21.10. Boston at Seattle (Buchholz – Vargas)

Tuesday 4 September

No early games

Wednesday 5 September

17.35. Philadelphia at Cincinnati (Halladay vs Leake)
18.45. NY Mets at St. Louis (Dickey – Wainwright) *ESPN America
19.10. Minnesota at Chicago White Sox (Walters – Peavy)
20.35. LA Angels at Oakland (Haren – McCarthy)

Thursday 6 September

17.10. Colorado at Atlanta (Chacin – Hudson) *ESPN America
17.40. Milwaukee at Miami (Estrada – Johnson)

Friday 7 September

No early games.

All of these games are available to watch live via the MLB.TV subscription at MLB.com.  The early games being shown on ESPN America are highlighted above, while the full ESPN/ESPN America schedule can be found on their website.  BBC 5 Live Sports Extra can be found on digital radio, digital TV and on the BBC.co.uk website (coverage on the website is only available to UK residents). The complete schedule for this week’s MLB games can be found on MLB.com.