Sunday’s MLB games: Full early schedule, then BOS-NYY later on BBC 5 Live Sports Extra

Yesterday’s ‘early’ games brought plenty of drama.  The Texas Rangers clinched the AL West with their victory over the Oakland A’s, the San Diego Padres earned a walk-off win against the Cincinnati Reds and the Atlanta Braves snapped their losing streak with a 5-0 win over the Washington Nationals.

We can expect more of the same today as the teams get ready to enter the final week of the regular season.

BBC 5 Live Sport Extra

BBC 5 Live Sport Extra’s plans are not completely clear.  At time of writing the published schedule shows an unspecified MLB game at 18.00,  the NFL game between Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos at 21.00 and then another MLB game (Red Sox-Yankees) from 1.00 a.m.

However, show producer Simon Crosse sent out a message on Wednesday stating:

“After the Twins clinched last night, we decided that the Yankees/Red Sox game was too good to miss….join us, black coffee in hand, for live coverage from Yankee Stadium just before 1am, Sunday night, Monday morning….”. 

That implies that they are broadcasting Boston-New York game instead of the early Minnesota-Detroit game, rather than bringing us both of them.  Hopefully we’ll get some clarification later this afternoon. 

Today’s early game schedule

Giants-Rockies and Reds-Padres are obviously the stand-out fixtures, although the Braves-Nationals game should be an excellent way to start the evening as well.  Atlanta gained a much-needed victory yesterday and they are now back in a tie with the Giants for the Wild Card.  Today’s game provides an intriguing pitching match-up as Brandon Beachy once again fills in for Jair Jurrjens to make only his second Major League start against Livan Hernandez, who is a veteran of 444 career Big League outings.

Jurrjens may be nursing an injury, but the Netherlands are likely to be represented in that game by the Nats’ outfielder Roger Bernadina and there could be two other Dutch players taking the field in the Majors. Rick van den Hurk is scheduled to start for the Orioles against the Blue Jays, while outfielder Greg Halman made his Major League debut for the Mariners on Thursday and may get into their game against the Rays today.

All times are in BST.

18.05. Kansas City at Cleveland (Bruce Chen – Fausto Carmona)
18.05. Minnesota at Detroit (Brian Duensing Rick Porcello) * ESPN America
18.07. Baltimore at Toronto (Rick van den Hurk – Shaun Marcum)
18.35. Atlanta at Washington (Brandon Beachy – Livan Hernandez)
18.35. NY Mets at Philadelphia (Pat Misch – Cole Hamels)
18.35. Houston at Pittsburgh (J.A. Happ – Paul Maholm)
18.40. Seattle at Tampa Bay (Luke French – James Shields)
19.10. Florida at Milwaukee (Adalberto Mendez – Chris Capuano)
19.20. St. Louis at Chicago Cubs (Jake Westbrook – Jeff Samardzija)
20.10. San Francisco at Colorado (Matt Cain – Jorge De La Rosa)
20.35. Chicago White Sox at LA Angels (Tony Pena – Jered Weaver)
21.05. Texas at Oakland (Colby Lewis – Trevor Cahill)
21.05. Cincinnati at San Diego (Homer Bailey – Clayton Richard) * ESPN America
21.10. LA Dodgers at Arizona (Chad Billingsley – Joe Saunders)

01.05. a.m. Boston at NY Yankees (Daisuke Matsuzaka – Dustin Moseley) * BBC 5 Live Sports Extra, ESPN America

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. 5 Live Sports Extra’s MLB coverage can be found on DAB radio, digitial TV and, for UK residents, on the BBC.co.uk website.