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MLB This Week: Five playoff places still up for grabs

by Matt Smith

Scarcely believable though it may be, we have reached the final week of the 2013 regular season already.

Whilst five teams have clinched a playoff place, one of them (St. Louis Cardinals) is still trying to win their division rather than run the risk of the Wild Card ‘play-in’ game and five other spots are still up for grabs.

That leaves plenty to play for this week and the pre-midnight U.K. time starts from Monday to Friday offer a number of games involving teams desperate for a win.

We start on Monday evening with a crucial game from the AL Wild Card race. The Tampa Bay Rays have won the first three games of their series against the Baltimore Orioles and that has given them a half-game lead over the Cleveland Indians for the top Wild Card and a two-game lead over the Texas Rangers.

Meanwhile Baltimore are now 4.5 games out and realistically need to win virtually all their remaining games to repeat their playoff place of 2012, starting with the series finale against the Rays.

Wednesday’s early games take us head-first into the NL Central/Wild Card battle with all three contending teams in action. The Reds and Cardinals are both at home, whilst the Pirates are at Wrigley Field.

All times are in BST.

Monday 23 September

20.10. Baltimore at Tampa Bay (Chen – Archer) *ESPN

Tuesday 24 September

No early games

Wednesday 25 September

17.35. NY Mets at Cincinnati (Matsuzaka – Reynolds)
18.45. Washington at St. Louis (Zimmermann – Miller)
19.20. Pittsburgh at Chicago Cubs (Liriano – Arrieta)
20.35. Oakland at LA Angels (Colon – Weaver)

Thursday 26 September

23.40. Arizona at San Diego (Cahill – Erlin)

Friday 27 September

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 are highlighted above. 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

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