{"id":13283,"date":"2012-04-21T12:58:21","date_gmt":"2012-04-21T11:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=13283"},"modified":"2012-04-21T12:59:16","modified_gmt":"2012-04-21T11:59:16","slug":"six-early-games-on-saturday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=13283","title":{"rendered":"Six early games on Saturday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There are six pre-midnight starts in MLB today, including a Stephen Strasburg appearance in Washington, the Rangers versus the Tigers and the second part of the first Yankees-Red Sox series of the season.<\/p>\n

All times are in BST.<\/p>\n

18.05. Cincinnati at Chicago Cubs (Leake – Maholm)
\n18.05. Miami at Washington (Sanchez – Strasburg)
\n18.05. Texas at Detroit (Harrison – Porcello)
\n18.10. San Francisco at NY Mets (Vogelsong – Pelfrey) *ESPN America<\/strong><\/p>\n

21.05. NY Yankees at Boston (Garcia – Doubront) *ESPN America
\n<\/strong>21.05. Chicago White Sox at Seattle (Humber – Beavan)<\/p>\n

Strasburg has started the season with a 2-0 record and a 1.42 ERA over his first three starts against the Cubs, Mets and Astros, striking out a batter per inning (19 in 19). The Marlins were shut-out by Ross Detwiler and the Nationals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 bullpen yesterday in a 2-0 defeat and it will only get harder for Miami against Washington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ace on his own turf.<\/p>\n

Most of the talk surrounding Strasburg is the prospect of him being shut down later in the season to limit the amount of innings he pitches.\u00c2\u00a0 Being careful with such a rare talent coming back from Tommy John surgery certainly makes sense, although it remains to be seen whether some sort of hard innings limit (160 has been mentioned, although Nationals GM Mike Rizzo has denied they currently have such a prescribed plan) and simply ending his season early rather than managing his workload over the year is the best way to go.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, the Rangers and Tigers were rained out yesterday so they will play a day-night double-header today. They were already scheduled to play an early game today and from a selfish point of view it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a bit disappointing that both sides have opted to keep their starting pitchers pitching in the originally intended order.<\/p>\n

We were going to have a Neftali Feliz-Justin Verlander match-up in the early game, but they will now play in the night-cap and yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s scheduled starters Scott Harrison and Rick Porcello will pitch the early game. Both are good pitchers and have started the season well so it should still be a good game, particularly with the Rangers putting their seven-game winning streak on the line, but Feliz-Verlander potentially will be a stand-out contest. Maybe that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one to forfeit some sleep for in the early hours of Sunday morning?<\/p>\n

As for the Yankees-Red Sox game, yesterday New York gleefully rained on Boston\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parade marking the 100th year anniversary of the first game at Fenway Park. Clay Buchholz was launched for five home runs by the Yankees, so Boston\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s starter today Felix Doubront will hope to do a better job of keeping the ball in the park today.<\/p>\n

All of these games are available to watch live via the <\/em>MLB.TV subscription<\/em> at <\/em>MLB.com<\/em><\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 ESPN America is showing the Giants-Mets game from 18.00, followed by the Yankees-Red Sox game.\u00c2\u00a0 The full schedule for today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s games can be found on <\/em>MLB.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are six pre-midnight starts in MLB on Saturday, including a Stephen Strasburg appearance in Washington, the Rangers versus the Tigers and the second part of the first Yankees-Red Sox series of the season<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[82,25,70,553,66],"class_list":["post-13283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball-coverage","category-mlb-2","tag-bst-guide","tag-espn-america","tag-gamedayaudio","tag-mlb-2","tag-mlb-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13283"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13288,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13283\/revisions\/13288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}