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Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s game on BBC Five Live Sports Extra is a match-up from the American League Central, as the Kansas City Royals (39-48) take on the Chicago White Sox (48-38) at U.S. Cellular Field.\u00c2\u00a0 The White Sox have won the first two games of the series and will be going for the sweep today.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jonny Gould and Josh Chetwynd will be on air from 19.00 with the game scheduled to begin five minutes later.\u00c2\u00a0 Coverage is available on DAB Radio and via digital TV, although the BBC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s MLB rights do not appear to stretch to online streaming for UK listeners.\u00c2\u00a0 We won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be running a live blog this week, although I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be commenting on the game and the coverage via my Twitter feed<\/a>.<\/p>\n The World Cup final between the Netherlands and Spain kicks off at 19.30, so mute the commentary (and the vuvuzelas) and take in the two sporting events at the same time.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n A Royal Appearance<\/strong><\/p>\n As mentioned by Jonny and Josh during last week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s programme, one of the few downsides to their \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBaseball on 5\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 broadcasts was that they were tied to the games that ESPN wanted to show.\u00c2\u00a0 This meant that some teams were featured regularly (the east coast behemoths: Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Phillies etc), while others were rarely, if ever, showcased in front of the late-night British audience.<\/p>\n The Kansas City Royals were one of those teams that did not get a look in.\u00c2\u00a0 North Americans might laugh at the thought of people wanting to watch the rank-bad Royals or the poor Pirates, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to overlook just how little MLB coverage we get.\u00c2\u00a0 Particularly in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when MLB.com\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s online content was nowhere near its current outstanding level, if a team wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t on Five, you basically didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem them at all.\u00c2\u00a0 Even the worst teams normally have one or two players that any baseball fan would enjoy watching, a Zack Greinke or an Andrew McCutchen, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to feel like you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve really experienced an MLB season without seeing every team at least once.<\/p>\n So it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s with some cheer that the Royals are welcomed on to the British airwaves this evening, although it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s typical of their luck that they have been scheduled against the World Cup final.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s starting pitchers<\/strong><\/p>\n Josh has at least got his wish, expressed with a laugh last Sunday, that Zack Greinke will take the mound for the Royals.\u00c2\u00a0 Greinke is the reigning AL Cy Young winner, the annual award given to the best pitcher in each league, and his recovery from nearly quitting the game due to a social anxiety disorder<\/a> to being the best pitcher in the league last year was one of defining stories of the 2009 season.<\/p>\n He hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hit those astonishing heights again so far this season.\u00c2\u00a0 April went well enough, but May and June were less impressive, giving up six or more runs in three of his twelve starts.\u00c2\u00a0 Greinke actually was credited with a win the last time he gave up six runs, which goes to show how arbitrary a win-loss record is.\u00c2\u00a0 That six-run appearance was on 30 June against the White Sox, so they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have a recent good memory of getting at the Royals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 ace.\u00c2\u00a0 However, Greinke was back on form in his next, and most recent, start when he struck out nine and conceded just one unearned run over seven innings against the Mariners.\u00c2\u00a0 The White Sox’s hitters know all to well that if Greinke is on form, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to be a tough day at the office.<\/p>\n Former Cy Young winner Jake Peavy would have started against Greinke, but he is scheduled to have season-ending surgery and the White Sox will instead turn to their Triple-A team and call-up their top pitching prospect: Dan Hudson.\u00c2\u00a0 Looking back on 2009, Baseball Prospectus described Hudson as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the minor league\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s breakout pitcher\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and his season ended with a taste of the Big Leagues in September, making six appearances including two starts.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Hudson was a candidate to make the White Sox\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s roster out of Spring Training, but the team had five starters already set and they decided to send him to Triple-A to continue starting, rather than putting him in the bullpen.\u00c2\u00a0 That move was made in the firm belief that he would be back up in the Big Leagues sometime during the season. The 23 year old has struck out an impressive 10.4 batters per nine innings for the Charlotte Knights<\/a>, compiling a 11-4 record and a 3.47 ERA over seventeen starts.\u00c2\u00a0 Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s game will be his 2010 Major League debut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s game is a match-up from the American League Central, as the Kansas City Royals take on the Chicago White Sox. Mute the World Cup final on your TV and enjoy the two events at the same time!<\/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":[226,232,225,112,231,163,114,553],"class_list":["post-8526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball-coverage","category-mlb-2","tag-5-live-sports-extra","tag-baseball-on-the-bbc","tag-bbc","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-jonny-gould","tag-josh-chetwynd","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8526","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=8526"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8538,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8526\/revisions\/8538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}