{"id":8361,"date":"2010-06-26T11:38:43","date_gmt":"2010-06-26T10:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=8361"},"modified":"2010-06-26T11:45:33","modified_gmt":"2010-06-26T10:45:33","slug":"saturdays-early-mlb-games-johan-santana-faces-the-twins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=8361","title":{"rendered":"Saturday’s early MLB games: Johan Santana faces the Twins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ho hum, another no-hitter.<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a freak occurrence, maybe there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an underlying reason why pitchers are racking up historical feats at an unprecedented pace this season?\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll leave such research to people better positioned to delve into the topic and get on with enjoying the games.<\/p>\n

And thankfully there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a decent selection of early games to enjoy live in the British evening today.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The opener is the highlight of the day from a storyline perspective.\u00c2\u00a0 Johan Santana will face his former team for the first time since being traded to the Mets during the 2007\/08 offseason.\u00c2\u00a0 That would be a notable story in itself, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all the more so coming in a difficult week for the former Cy Young winner, both in admitting that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still recovering from offseason elbow surgery and the off-the-field revelation<\/a> that he was accused of sexual battery last October, a case that was closed due to lack of evidence.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be glad to get back out on the field and it should be a good match-up against Carl Pavano, who pitched a complete game against the Phillies last time out and is quietly having a very accomplished season.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, his moustache seems to be getting more attention<\/a> than his pitching.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Cole Hamels takes on the Blue Jays a day after Roy Halladay returned to his former team and got the win, Ian Kennedy has the task of following up Edwin Jackson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no-no as he matches up against David Price and the Rays, and the impressive Doug Fister makes a very welcome return for the Mariners after a stint on the Disabled List.\u00c2\u00a0 All times are in BST.<\/p>\n

18.10. Minnesota at NY Mets (Carl Pavano – Johan Santana) * ESPN America
\n<\/strong>19.10. St. Louis at Kansas City (Blake Hawksworth – Kyle Davies)
\n20.05. Houston at Texas (Josh Banks – C.J. Wilson)
\n21.00. Detroit at Atlanta (Max Scherzer – Kenshin Kawakami)
\n21.05. Washington at Baltimore (Livan Hernandez – Brad Bergesen) * ESPN America<\/strong>
\n21.05. Philadelphia at Toronto (Cole Hamels – Shaun Marcum)
\n21.05. Arizona at Tampa Bay (Ian Kennedy – David Price)
\n21.10. Seattle at Milwaukee (Doug Fister – Randy Wolf)<\/p>\n

All the above games can be followed via various resources on MLB.com<\/a> (Gameday, At Bat with Gameday Audio and MLB.tv).\u00c2\u00a0 It’s wall-to-wall MLB on ESPN America<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0tonight, as the two noted games above are followed by Yankees-Dodgers from midnight.<\/em> A complete schedule of MLB games can be found on MLB.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another no-hitter?! Just another reminder that you don’t want to miss a day of action in MLB. And you don’t have to, as there are 8 early games on Saturday<\/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":[136,107,104,82,111,25,70,123,114,121,110,553,66,108,99,127,119,102,126,103,109],"class_list":["post-8361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball-coverage","category-mlb-2","tag-arizona-diamondbacks","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-baltimore-orioles","tag-bst-guide","tag-detroit-tigers","tag-espn-america","tag-gamedayaudio","tag-houston-astros","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-milwaukee-brewers","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-mlb-2","tag-mlb-tv","tag-new-york-mets","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-seattle-mariners","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-texas-rangers","tag-toronto-blue-jays","tag-washington-nationals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8361","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=8361"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8364,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8361\/revisions\/8364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}