{"id":13983,"date":"2012-07-01T11:20:20","date_gmt":"2012-07-01T10:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=13983"},"modified":"2012-07-01T11:20:20","modified_gmt":"2012-07-01T10:20:20","slug":"plenty-of-sport-to-enjoy-on-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=13983","title":{"rendered":"Plenty of sport to enjoy on Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Saturday\u00c2\u00a0provided the latest bit of proof that every time you watch a ballgame, you might see something you’ve never seen before.<\/p>\n

It would have been easy to mock this weekend’s series between the San Diego Padres and Colorado Rockies. The two NL West teams are both\u00c2\u00a0having poor seasons and are two of the few teams that you could be relatively confident about excluding from the play-off race before we have reached\u00c2\u00a0the All-Star Break.<\/p>\n

Those watching their game yesterday would have been forgiven for having low expectations\u00c2\u00a0of it being a memorable encounter, but it\u00c2\u00a0turned into one\u00c2\u00a0thanks to Yasmani Grandal. He made his Major League debut for the Padres and created a bit of history<\/a> in the process, becoming “the first player in MLB history to have his first two career hits as homers from opposite sides of the plate in the same game, according to Elias Sports Bureau”.<\/p>\n

As typical on Sunday, the vast majority of the MLB games today are being played during the day time in North America and therefore during the evening in the U.K.\u00c2\u00a0 The European Championship Final between Italy and Spain understandably will be the main sporting attraction for many this evening, but there are plenty of good MLB games to enjoy alongside the footy.<\/p>\n

All times are\u00c2\u00a0in BST.<\/p>\n

18.10. Philadelphia at Miami (Blanton – Nolasco) *MLB.com Free Game of the Day<\/strong>
\n18.35. Cleveland at Baltimore (Masterson – Matusz)
\n18.35. Washington at Atlanta (Gonzalez – Hudson)
\n18.40. Detroit at Tampa Bay (Smyly – Cobb)
\n19.05. Chicago White Sox at NY Yankees (Floyd – Hughes)
\n19.10. Arizona at Milwaukee (Collmenter – Gallardo)
\n19.10. Kansas City at Minnesota\u00c2\u00a0(Chen – Liriano)
\n19.15. Pittsburgh at St. Louis (Bedard – Westbrook)
\n19.20. Houston at Chicago Cubs (Rodriguez – Wood)
\n20.07. LA Angels at Toronto (Wilson – Laffey)
\n20.10. San Diego at Colorado (Wells – Pomeranz)
\n21.05. Cincinnati at San Francisco (Arroyo – Vogelsong)
\n21.10. Boston at Seattle (Doubront – Vargas)<\/p>\n

00.05. Oakland at Texas (Blackley – Darvish)<\/em>
\n 01.00. NY Mets at LA Dodgers (Gee – Kershaw).<\/em><\/p>\n

The Baltimore Orioles completed a trade with the Phillies\u00c2\u00a0for Jim Thome yesterday and he should be eligible to make his Orioles debut today against his first team, Cleveland. It always looked dubious that the Phillies would be able to give Thome regular at-bats in the non-DH league, so the trade should make sense for all parties. Thome obviously isn’t the hitter he was four or five years ago, but he can still be productive and should be a boost for the Orioles, who have hit a rough patch of late.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Francisco Liriano could be another player on the trading block over the coming weeks.\u00c2\u00a0He has been a revelation since returning to the Twins’ rotation after\u00c2\u00a0a temporary move to the bullpen earlier this season. Prospective new teams will be wary that this is just a\u00c2\u00a0brief upturn in form, so a couple more good starts leading up to the All-Star Break would help reduce those fears.<\/p>\n

The LA Dodgers are trying to complete a trade for Astros slugger Carlos Lee. The Dodgers have lost 11 of their last 12 games, including all of their last 7, and are in desperate need for some offensive help even with Matt Kemp being on course to return after the All-Star Break. Lee is able to veto a trade to the Dodgers as per the terms of his contract with the Astros, so we may learn today whether that deal will go through or not.<\/p>\n

As for the best pitching match-up of the day, Turner Field is probably the place to be with Gio Gonzalez and Tim Hudson on the mound. The extreme heat in Atlanta got the better of the Nationals’ ace Stephen Strasburg yesterday as the Braves prevailed 7-5.<\/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 once again concentrating on other sports this evening, although the Mets v Dodgers\u00c2\u00a0game will be broadcast on the main ESPN channel.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday provided the latest bit of proof that every time you watch a ballgame, you might see something you’ve never seen before. While the Italy-Spain game will be the main sporting attraction for many on Sunday evening, make sure to keep in touch with the MLB action as well, just in case history is being created for the second consecutive day.<\/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-13983","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\/13983","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=13983"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13990,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13983\/revisions\/13990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}