Games for a Sunday Morning

Early starts this morning. Fire up a pot of coffee and find the remote, it’s time for baseball:

• Tigers at Yankees, 10:05 a.m. PT — Jeremy Bonderman and Chien-Ming Wang hook up here. The Tigers are 10-20 over their past 30 games, while the Yankees are 20-10. It’s a testament to New York’s offense that this team is in a pennant race despite having only 3 1/2 starting pitchers.
• Angels at Red Sox, 11:05 a.m. PT — Speaking of testament to offense, Boston keeps winning despite the presence of Julian Tavarez in its rotation. Tavarez had a great rookie season for the Indians back in ‘95 as a reliever, and pitched well for St. Louis in the same capacity in ‘04, but he is not big-league starting material. Opponents are batting .347/.404/.531 against him in innings 4-6 this season. Ouch. Tavarez is opposed by lefty Joe Saunders.
• Diamondbacks at Braves, 10:05 a.m. PT — Arizona is unstoppable. The Diamondbacks have won 22 of their last 30 games and extended their NL West lead to five games over San Diego. Rookie Yusmeiro Petit, who has been shelled in each of his previous two starts, gets the call against future Hall-of-Famer John Smoltz.
• Rockies at Dodgers, 1:10 p.m. PT — Jeff Francis, Brad Penny… Two division rivals clinging to wild card hopes… Sounds like a good time to me.

And those are your games for a Sunday. Happy watching!