The football season has started yet again, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no reason to divert attention from this enthralling MLB season.\u00c2\u00a0 There are four games starting before midnight UK time today.\u00c2\u00a0 All times are in BST.<\/p>\n
18.05. Cincinnati at Chicago Cubs (Edinson Volquez \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Randy Wells) * ESPN America<\/strong><\/p>\n Bronson Arroyo pitched seven score-less innings yesterday as the Reds defeated the Cubs 3-0 and maintained their half-game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals in the NL Central.\u00c2\u00a0 Arroyo walked just one batter in that performance, something Edinson Volquez is unlikely to match considering he has given up thirteen free passes over nine innings in his last three starts.\u00c2\u00a0 Volquez is coming back from Tommy John surgery and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s difficult to predict what type of performance he will serve up today: a source of concern for the Reds but a source of intrigue for the rest of us.\u00c2\u00a0 Randy Wells struggled through May and June, pitched well in his five starts during July but came back down to earth with a bump last time out, being chased by the Brewers after giving up seven runs in four innings. The Wrigley faithful will be looking for a return to July form from him today.<\/p>\n 18.07. Tampa Bay at Toronto (James Shields \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Brad Mills)<\/strong><\/p>\n Matt Garza and Brett Cecil put on a great display of pitching yesterday as the Blue Jays came out on top 2-1 and dropped the Rays to their third loss in a row.\u00c2\u00a0 It could be just as tough for the batters today. James Shields has been in dazzling form of late, most recently blanking the Yankees over 7.1 innings.\u00c2\u00a0 Meanwhile Mills made an impressive \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcspot start\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 back on 28 July against the Orioles and he is in line to be called up again for today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s game.\u00c2\u00a0 This is an important series for the Rays as their closest AL East rivals are battling each other in New York, giving Tampa the chance to improve their position over at least one of those teams if they can win the remaining games in the series.<\/p>\n 21.10. Boston at NY Yankees (John Lackey \u00e2\u20ac\u201c CC Sabathia) * ESPN America<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry is back in full swing yet again and yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s series opener was full of incident as per usual.\u00c2\u00a0 Francisco Cervelli\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dropped catch<\/a> proved costly for the Yankees and called to mind some of the dreadful fielding that Pakistan have committed so far in their Test Match against England this weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 There will be no sympathy from Boston as they aim to compound the\u00c2\u00a0frustration with another win today.\u00c2\u00a0 A Lackey-Sabathia pitching match-up sells itself, although Lackey hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t dominated in the way the Red Sox hoped he would following his signing over the offseason, while Sabathia has been a little out of sorts of late.\u00c2\u00a0 Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s big game could be just what both pitchers need to get them back on track.<\/p>\n 21.10. Texas at Oakland (Rich Harden \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Gio Gonzalez)<\/strong><\/p>\n Their East coast rivals will get most of the attention, but don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t overlook the other game taking place at ten past nine this evening.\u00c2\u00a0 The Rangers received a typically strong performance from Cliff Lee last night as they took the series opener 5-1 and increased their lead over the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in the West to 9.5 games.\u00c2\u00a0 The oft-injured Rich Harden returns to face his former team having pitched well in his first game back off the Disabled List against the Angels last Saturday.\u00c2\u00a0 Gio Gonzalez was even more impressive in his last outing live on BBC 5 Live Sports Extra against the White Sox, but a four-run fifth inning proved to be his downfall.<\/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 There’s a feast of baseball on\u00c2\u00a0ESPN America<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0with the two games noted above being followed by Mets-Phillies at midnight (or whenever the Red Sox and Yankees finish their game).<\/em> A complete schedule of MLB games can be found on MLB.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The football season has started yet again, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no reason to divert attention from this enthralling MLB season. There are four games starting before midnight UK time 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":[101,82,120,122,25,70,553,66,98,128,102,126,103],"class_list":["post-8784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball-coverage","category-mlb-2","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-bst-guide","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-espn-america","tag-gamedayaudio","tag-mlb-2","tag-mlb-tv","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-oakland-as","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-texas-rangers","tag-toronto-blue-jays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8784","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=8784"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8788,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8784\/revisions\/8788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}