Yesterday all four NL play-off spots were up for grabs. Now it’s down to two and the results from the early games today could go a long way to deciding who takes them. Bearing in mind the time difference, that’s perfect for us British fans.<\/p>\n
\nThere are six early games today, with the intriguing battle of the NL East taking centre stage. The Mets send John Maine to the mound against the Marlins at 18.10, probably needing a win to keep their season alive. The Phillies begin their match at 20.55, and if Florida do them a favour, Adam Eaton and his colleagues could be celebrating a pennant victory around midnight. A Mets win and a Phillies loss puts us back to square one though: dead level with one game each to go. British fans can watch this instalment of the saga live this evening either via MLB.TV or on NASN where coverage of the Nationals-Phillies game should start at 20.30.<\/p>\n
The other early game with play-off repercussions takes place in Milwaukee. Sadly for the Brewers, only their opponents still have October in their sights. The Padres try to follow their division rivals, the D-Backs, into the play-offs by taking advantage of a deflated Brew Crew at 20.55. However, the Brewers could decide to take out their anger on the Padres, and that could possibly prove fatal for San Diego. A Padres loss would hand the NL West division title to the D-Backs before they start their game later tonight (01.05). That’s bad news in itself for the Padres as they would lose one of their two current opportunities to make the play-offs, but it would get even worse if Arizona takes their foot off the gas a little (consciously or not) as they are playing the Rockies who just happen to be the Padres’ main rivals for the wild card. San Diego need to win, simple as that.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, the Devil Rays face the Blue Jays at 18.07, the Cubs take on the Reds (20.55), and the Angels play the A’s (21.05).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday all four NL play-off spots were up for grabs. Now it’s down to two and the results from the early games today could go a long way to deciding who takes them. Bearing in mind the time difference, that’s perfect for us British fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[82,553,66],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball-coverage","tag-bst-guide","tag-mlb-2","tag-mlb-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","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=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5356,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions\/5356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}