Thursday is known as the ‘Get-away’ day in MLB as games tend to be played during the day-time so that one or both teams can then get on a plane to travel to the destination of their weekend series.

This week, the term could be applied by England fans that see MLB as offering a chance to ‘get-away’ from the stress of the all-important World Cup group game against Uruguay. Whether that means catching some baseball in the pre-match hours to calm the nerves, or providing a distraction if the England game starts badly, we’ll have to wait and see.

There are three MLB games starting prior to the 20.00 England kick-off, with the game between Milwaukee and Arizona starting just before half-time if Luis Suarez has already sunk our chance by that point.

Those contests are part of a good selection of 15 MLB games starting before midnight U.K. time this working week. The College Baseball World Series is also in full swing and on a couple of nights this week we’re in a very rare (unprecedented?) position of having a choice of baseball games to watch on British TV, with BT Sport2 covering an MLB game and ESPN broadcasting a College World Series game.

All times are in BST.

Monday 16 June

No early games

Tuesday 17 June

20.40. San Diego at Seattle (Stults – Elias) *BT Sport2

Wednesday 18 June

17:10 Philadelphia at Atlanta (Hernandez - Harang)
17:40 Chicago Cubs at Miami (Arrieta - Eovaldi)
18:08 Kansas City at Detroit (Guthrie - Smyly)
18:10 Baltimore at Tampa Bay (Gausman - Cobb)
18:35 Minnesota at Boston (Gibson - Lackey)
18:45 NY Mets at St. Louis (Colon - Lynn)
19:10 San Francisco at Chicago White Sox (Hudson - Sale)
20:35 Texas at Oakland (Tepesch - Gray) *ESPN, MLB.com Free Game

Thursday 19 June

17:05 LA Angels at Cleveland (Richards - McAllister)
17:35 Cincinnati at Pittsburgh (Bailey - Locke) *ESPN
18:08 Kansas City at Detroit (Duffy - Sanchez)
20:40 Milwaukee at Arizona (Gallardo - Collmenter) *ESPN
23:40 Seattle at San Diego (Ramirez - Hahn) *MLB.com Free Game

Friday 20 June

21.05. Pittsburgh at Chicago Cubs (Morton – Jackson) *BT Sport

All of these games are available to watch live via the MLB.TV subscription at MLB.com. The early games being shown on BT Sport or ESPN are highlighted above. The complete schedule for this week’s MLB games can be found on MLB.com