There’s a good mix of early games from the American and National Leagues this working week, heading into Interleague play over the weekend.
We’ve got a couple of games on Monday leading up to the First Year Amateur Draft at midnight.
The Cardinals have managed only one run in the first three games of their series against the Mets and New York’s starter today, Dillon Gee, has been in good form recently too. St. Louis have lost five in a row in total and have slipped into third in the NL Central, with the Pittsburgh Pirates sneaking past into second. They’ll be very keen to take a positive from this series with a win today before starting a three-game series in Houston.
Like the Mets, the Giants have taken the first three games of their current home series and are going for the four-game sweep today. The Cubs have now lost fifteen of their last eighteen games, although Jeff Samardzija’s conversion into a Major League starter has been one of the very rare good news stories from Chicago’s season so far. He’ll go against Ryan Vogelsong at AT&T Park.
Later in the week, the Giants have two further day games, albeit with the game on Wednesday only narrowly coming in under the pre-midnight U.K. time ‘early’ game bracket.
Thursday is the main day for early games this week and there are some good potential pitching match-ups on the provisional list. The Mets’ game against the Nationals would be Johan Santana’s next  scheduled start; however he may be given some extra rest after his no-hitter exertions last Friday so we’ll need to wait and see who manager Terry Collins decides to go with on that day.
Nat Coombs and Josh Chetwynd will be covering all of the latest stories in MLB while broadcasting the Cubs-Brewers game on BBC Radio.
All times are in BST.
Monday 4 June
18.10. St. Louis at NY Mets (Lohse – Gee) *ESPN America
20.45. Chicago Cubs at San Francisco (Samardzija – Vogelsong)
Tuesday 5 June
No early games
Wednesday 6 June
23.35. San Francisco at San Diego (Bumgarner – Richard) *MLB.com Free Game of the Day
Thursday 7 June
18.05. Cleveland at Detroit (Lowe – Crosby) *ESPN America
18.05. NY Mets at Washington (TBA – Wang)
18.05. LA Dodgers at Philadelphia (Harang – Hamels)
19.10. Chicago Cubs at Milwaukee (Garza – Wolf) *BBC 5 Live Sports Extra
20.35. Texas at Oakland (Darvish – McCarthy)Â *MLB.com Free Game of the Day
20.35. San Francisco at San Diego (Cain – Volquez)
Friday 8 June
No early games.
All of these games are available to watch live via the MLB.TV subscription at MLB.com. The early games being shown on ESPN America are highlighted above, while the full ESPN/ESPN America schedule can be found on their website. BBC 5 Live Sports Extra can be found on digital radio, digital TV and on the BBC.co.uk website (coverage on the website is only available to UK residents). The complete schedule for this week’s MLB games can be found on MLB.com.
