We’ve got twelve ‘early’ MLB games this week, the highlight of which takes place on Thursday when Cole Hamels and Adam Wainwright are scheduled to meet. 

In fact, all five games scheduled for Thursday look like being good pitching match-ups.  Add in ‘Big Game’ James Shields, Javier Vazquez, Franscisco Lirano, Zack Greinke and a Buchholz-Gonzalez encounter on Thursday and the second half of the week looks set to produce plenty of good games to follow at a convenient time in the UK.  All times are in BST.

Monday 19 July

No early games

Tuesday 20 July

No early games

Wednesday 21 July

17.35. Tampa Bay at Baltimore (James Shields – Brad Bergesen)
18.05. LA Angels at NY Yankees (Joel Pineiro – Javier Vazquez)
18.10. Cleveland at Minnesota (Jake Westbrook – Francisco Liriano)
19.10. Toronto at Kansas City (Marc Rzepczynski – Zack Greinke)
19.20. Houston at Chicago Cubs (Brett Myers – Ted Lilly)
20.35. Boston at Oakland (Clay Buchholz – Gio Gonzalez)

Thursday 22 July

17.10. Colorado at Florida (Jorge De La Rosa – Josh Johnson)
17.35. Washington at Cincinnati (Livan Hernandez – Edinson Volquez)
18.05. Toronto at Detroit (Ricky Romero – Justin Verlander)
18.05. San Diego at Atlanta (Clayton Richard – Tim Hudson)
19.15. Philadelphia at St. Louis (Cole Hamels – Adam Wainwright)

Friday 23 July

19.20. St. Louis at Chicago Cubs (Jeff Suppan – Randy Wells)

All the above games can be followed via various resources on MLB.com (Gameday, At Bat with Gameday Audio and MLB.tv), while ESPN America’s MLB schedule can be found here. A complete schedule of MLB games can be found on MLB.com.