Editor's note: only the marquee game carries a line right now. We pull it from a real sportsbook page rather than guessing, and the rest of the slate runs without picks until our model ships. Every game below links to its tile on watch.uristocrat.com.
The MLB trade deadline hits at 6 p.m. ET, so most of tonight's rosters will be different from the ones that woke up this morning. Eight baseball games and three WNBA games follow it. The best of them is at Wrigley, where two teams that just spent big at the deadline finally play each other.
Marquee: Dodgers at Cubs, deadline day at Wrigley (8:05 p.m. ET, SportsNet LA / Marquee Sports Network)
Los Angeles is 69-43 and just got swept in Boston, which is why ESPN's preview files this one under stop the slide. It is also the team that pulled off the deadline's biggest move, landing Tigers ace Tarik Skubal, per ESPN's deadline tracker. He does not pitch tonight. Justin Wrobleski does, and at 11-2 with a 2.88 ERA he has been the quiet reason the rotation held together. Chicago is 63-49, sits 6.5 games back of Milwaukee in the Central, and leads the NL wild card. The Cubs answered the Dodgers by trading for Kevin Gausman and sending Jameson Taillon to Toronto. Matthew Boyd (6-1, 3.41) starts for them. Two clubs that think they are built for October, three days of it starting tonight.
Vegas line: Dodgers -126, Cubs +104. Run line Dodgers -1.5 (+134). Total 8. Odds via ESPN (DraftKings).
Also tonight
- Aces at Dream (7:00 p.m. ET, NBC Sports Network / Peacock). Las Vegas is 20-9, Atlanta is 18-10, and this is the only national WNBA window of the evening. Two of the league's best defenses, one road trip that decides who owns the tiebreaker.
- Pirates at Brewers (7:40 p.m. ET). Milwaukee is 69-42, the best winning percentage in baseball, and has spent the summer beating people without a superstar. Bubba Chandler goes for Pittsburgh against Brandon Sproat. The Pirates are 56-57 and mostly here to spoil.
- Cardinals at Yankees (7:05 p.m. ET, YES). New York is 63-49 and added a bat at the deadline, picking up slugger Garcia from Washington. Cam Schlittler starts against Michael McGreevy. St. Louis is 55-57 and running out of runway.
- Giants at Rangers (8:00 p.m. ET, ESPN). The national game, and neither team is above .500. Logan Webb is the reason to watch. San Francisco lost Tyler Mahle to Atlanta at the deadline, which tells you how the front office reads this season.
- Rays at Rockies (8:40 p.m. ET). Tampa Bay is 65-46 with a 41-18 road record, which is absurd, and Colorado is 45-67. Ian Seymour pitches at Coors, where nothing about a pitcher's line means what it usually means.
- Mercury at Sky (9:00 p.m. ET, USA Network). Phoenix is 11-19, Chicago is 11-18, and both are running out of games to fix it. Late window, low stakes, but it is on network TV and the Sky have been better at home.
Deadline day usually flattens the actual baseball. Everybody watches the wire until 6, then the games start and half the new guys are still on planes. Tonight is the exception, because the two teams that made the loudest moves are in the same ballpark by 8:05. Full slate and start times at watch.uristocrat.com. The Dodgers arrive in Chicago a day after acquiring Tarik Skubal from Detroit; he starts Tuesday at Wrigley.
Boston also acquired Adley Rutschman from the Orioles ahead of the deadline.
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