We’ve completed the first two calendar months of the 2014 MLB season and it’s a slightly mixed story when it comes to assessing the opportunities British fans have had to watch MLB games during the working week at a convenient hour (pre-midnight starts).
The first working day of the 2014 regular season came on 31 March and that brought us 9 games starting before midnight U.K. time. During April there were 62 early games, which compares favourably with 64 in the same month last year (bearing in mind April in 2013 included the raft of Opening Day games).
However, this year’s total of 47 early games in May is down from the number we’ve seen in previous years for that month and appears to be part of a trend of declining day-game numbers (54 in May 2013, 55 in 2012 and 61 in 2011).
June and July have produced a relative mid-season dip in working-week day-games over the past three seasons (both averaging 40 per month) and the first week of June this year looks like a continuation of this trend.
Let’s not be too disheartened though: there are only eight day-games, but there are some good contests among them, particularly on Thursday when the likes of Madison Bumgarner, Masahiro Tanaka, Justin Verlander and Stephen Strasburg are all scheduled to be taking the mound.
All times are in BST.
Monday 2 June
No early games
Tuesday 3 June
No early games
Wednesday 4 June
17:10. Seattle at Atlanta (Iwakuma – Minor) *ESPN
23:40. Pittsburgh at San Diego (Liriano – Kennedy)
Thursday 5 June
17:35. San Francisco at Cincinnati (Bumgarner – Leake) *ESPN
18:05. Oakland at NY Yankees (Pomeranz – Tanaka)
18:08. Toronto at Detroit (Happ – Verlander)
21:05. Philadelphia at Washington (Kendrick – Strasburg)
21:10. Miami at Tampa Bay (Turner – Odorizzi) *ESPN
Friday 6 June
21:05. Miami at Chicago Cubs (Eovaldi – Hammel)
All of these games are available to watch live via the MLB.TV subscription at MLB.com. The early games being shown on ESPN are highlighted above. The complete schedule for this week’s MLB games can be found on MLB.com
