Dugout scuffles in Seattle, Kelly Johnson hitting for the cycle, trade talks heating up over Dan Haren: yesterday was a typically action-packed day in the Majors and you can expect more of the same today.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are five early games to enjoy live in the British evening.\u00c2\u00a0 All times are in BST.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
18.05. Kansas City at NY Yankees (Kyle Davies – Sergio Mitre)<\/strong><\/p>\n This series is being dominated by Alex Rodriguez\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s quest for career home run number 600 and the presence of Kyle Davies has many expecting the milestone to be reached today.\u00c2\u00a0 Davies was on the mound when Rodriguez hit his 500th home run in August 2007 and a little under three years later, the symmetry-loving baseball gods have conspired to place him in a potentially historic situation yet again, one that he would prefer not to be a part of.\u00c2\u00a0 Sergio Mitre begins his stint as Andy Pettitte\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s substitute in the Yankee rotation today.\u00c2\u00a0 The trade rumours surrounding the Yankees suggest that they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect him to be in that position for too long, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s up to Mitre to put together a string of good starts to change their mind.<\/p>\n 18.05. St. Louis at Chicago Cubs (Blake Hawksworth – Tom Gorzelanny)<\/strong><\/p>\n The Cubs shut-out the Cardinals in the only day game yesterday.\u00c2\u00a0 WGN broadcasters Len Kasper and Bob Brenly noted that due to the luck of the schedule, the Cubs will only have to face one of the Cardinals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 three top pitchers (Chris Carpenter tomorrow night) in this series and they need to take advantage of the situation.\u00c2\u00a0 They did that yesterday by beating Jeff Suppan, although they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t beat him quite as badly as the first two innings suggested they would, with Suppan struggling to find the strike zone early and the wind howling out at Wrigley.\u00c2\u00a0 Hawksworth is another unheralded pitcher that the Cubs need to attack. Gorzelanny has recorded three straight wins for the Cubs, but he walked twelve batters in those three games and if he keeps giving out free passes, his luck will soon run out.<\/p>\n 21.10. Chicago White Sox at Oakland (Freddy Garcia – Vin Mazzaro)<\/strong><\/p>\n Mark Buerhle pitched a gem for the White Sox yesterday, giving up just four hits and one run over nine innings as Chicago won the series opener 5-1.\u00c2\u00a0 That landed Trevor Cahill with a hard-luck loss and if another of the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s young starters, Vin Mazzaro, can put on a\u00c2\u00a0 repeat performance of Cahill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s strong showing today, the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s will fancy their chances of levelling the series.\u00c2\u00a0 Mazzaro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent form suggests there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good chance he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll do just that: he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 2-0 with a 2.05 ERA from his three starts in July and, just as importantly, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s given the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s at least 7 innings each time.<\/p>\n 21.10. NY Mets at LA Dodgers (Mike Pelfrey – Carlos Monasterios) * ESPN America<\/strong><\/p>\n If yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s contest between these two was any indication, this game is going to be eventful.\u00c2\u00a0 The Mets\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 manager Jerry Manuel was thrown out of the game in the second inning and his team responded by making a series of spectacular fielding plays, coupled with Ike Davis taking Vicente Padilla\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ridiculously slow \u00e2\u20ac\u02dceephus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pitch into the seats for a home run.\u00c2\u00a0 The Dodgers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 bullpen imploded yet again as the Mets ran out 6-1 winners, snapping a four-game losing streak and adding to L.A.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s woes in what has been a testing period for the team since the All-Star break.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcEncore\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, bellows the crowd!<\/p>\n 21.10. Colorado at Philadelphia (Ubaldo Jimenez – Kyle Kendrick)<\/strong><\/p>\n The Phillies chucked their ace at Colorado in the series opener yesterday and Roy Halladay was his normal outstanding self, pitching eight scoreless innings as Philadelphia won 6-0.\u00c2\u00a0 The Rockies will look at today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s starting pitcher match-up and think that the shoe will now be on the other foot.\u00c2\u00a0 However, over his last few starts, Jimenez has not been the unhittable monster that we saw back in April and May.\u00c2\u00a0 Now\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the time for him to re-find that form. As for the Phillies, Kyle Kendrick was sent down to the minors earlier this week, but an injury to the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcOld Man of the Majors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Jamie Moyer has given him a stay of execution.<\/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\u00c2\u00a0ESPN America<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0is showing Mets-Dodgers from 21.00.<\/em> A complete schedule of MLB games can be found on MLB.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are five early games to enjoy live in the British evening on Saturday including Royals v Yankees, with Alex Rodriguez sitting on 599 career home runs<\/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":[82,120,112,133,25,70,114,132,553,66,108,98,128,99,119],"class_list":["post-8647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball-coverage","category-mlb-2","tag-bst-guide","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-colorado-rockies","tag-espn-america","tag-gamedayaudio","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-mlb-2","tag-mlb-tv","tag-new-york-mets","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-oakland-as","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-st-louis-cardinals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8647","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=8647"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8664,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8647\/revisions\/8664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}