Editor's note: picks are not live yet. Lines here come from real sportsbook pages only, and when a game has no sourced line we leave it off. Full slate, every league, live at watch.uristocrat.com.
Nothing left to preview on Sunday. Every MLB and WNBA game on the August 16 slate has already started or finished, including the Brewers and Dodgers at Chavez Ravine and Fever at Dream on ESPN. So this one points forward. Monday is a full 11-game baseball card off ESPN's Monday scoreboard, headlined by a Cardinals-Reds doubleheader in Cincinnati and both Chicago teams in the same building.
Monday's slate
- Cardinals at Reds, game one (1:40pm ET). The makeup half of a doubleheader at Great American Ball Park. St. Louis is 63-61 and hanging around the wild card race. Cincinnati is 59-64 and mostly playing for next year.
- Tigers at Pirates (7:00pm ET, ESPN). The national game and a strange one. Detroit at 60-64 and Pittsburgh at 61-65 are both under .500, so this is a look at two rosters figuring out what they keep.
- Padres at Mets (7:10pm ET). San Diego is 67-58 and still very much alive. New York is 56-69 and out of it, which makes Citi Field a soft spot on the Padres schedule they cannot afford to waste.
- Braves at Twins (7:40pm ET). Atlanta at 74-50 has the second best record in the National League. Minnesota at 60-65 has been stuck in neutral all summer. Best win total on the board.
- White Sox at Cubs (8:05pm ET). Crosstown at Wrigley. The Cubs are 72-53 and the White Sox are a genuinely respectable 65-58, so the usual lopsided version of this series does not apply this year.
- Dodgers at Rockies (8:40pm ET). Los Angeles is 74-51 and Colorado is 50-74. Watch it for the Dodgers lineup at altitude, not for the standings.
- Wings at Valkyries (10:00pm ET, Peacock). Golden State at 24-9 is the best team in the league right now. Dallas at 20-15 is fighting for seeding. Late window, worth staying up for.
The thread on Monday is the gap between teams still playing for something and teams already sorting through next season. Braves, Cubs, Padres and Dodgers all have real stakes. Almost everyone they play does not.
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