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Welcome to Wednesday, and the sports world right now is all about making a strong first impression. That goes for baseball players who were shipped to new teams around Monday’s trade deadline — the most notable of whom made his new-uniform debut last night with Tarik Skubal starting for the Dodgers — and for new call-ups like the Yankees’ George Lombard Jr., who homered in his MLB debut. (Amazingly, Lombard’s younger brother Jacob also homered in his first professional game for Single-A Jupiter on the same night!) And college football teams have made their first impressions with pollsters, with the release of the coaches poll yesterday. Along with all that in today’s newsletter, let’s check out this action on the schedule today:
🗓️ TONIGHT’S DANCE
The Main Events
All listed times are Eastern. 🚨= Elimination game
MLB:
⚾ Dodgers (47%) at Cubs (53%)* - 2:20 p.m. (MLB Network / MLB.tv)
⚾ Cardinals (42%) at Yankees (58%) - 7:05 p.m. (YES / MLB.tv)
⚾ Pirates (44%) at Brewers (56%) - 7:40 p.m. (ESPN / MLB.tv)
⚾ Padres (52%) at D-Backs (48%) - 9:40 p.m. (MLB.tv)
⚾ Championship check-in: Dodgers 38% to win World Series
WNBA:
🏀 Storm (23%) at Liberty (77%) - 7 p.m. (USA Network / WNBA League Pass)
🏀 Wings (57%) at Mystics (43%) - 7:30 p.m. (WNBA League Pass)
🏀 Sparks (44%) at Sky (56%) - 9 p.m. (USA Network / WNBA League Pass)
🏀 Championship check-in: Lynx 46% to win WNBA title
Soccer:
⚽ Leagues Cup: Inter Miami CF (72%) vs. Atlético de San Luis (14%) - 7:30 p.m. (Apple TV - MLS Season Pass)
⚽ Leagues Cup: C.F. Monterrey (44%) vs. Orlando City SC (35%) - 7:30 p.m. (Apple TV - MLS Season Pass)
⚽ NWSL: Denver (43%) at North Carolina (32%) - 10 p.m. (CBS Sports Network)
⚽ Leagues Cup: LAFC (33%) vs. Chivas Guadalajara (42%) - 10:30 p.m. (Apple TV - MLS Season Pass)
⚽ MLS Championship check-in: Inter Miami 27% to win MLS Cup
⚽ NWSL Championship check-in: Washington Spirit 31% to win
Football:
🏈 NFL training camps fully underway / Preseason preparations (Hall of Fame Game week!)
Tennis:
🎾 National Bank Open (Canadian Open) - Main Draw Round 1 - 11 a.m. (Tennis Channel / TC Plus) - Alexander Zverev 26% to win (men’s)
🔍 FIND THE EDGE
A Skubal debut-bal
Are we too obsessed here with lefty ace Tarik Skubal joining the LA Dodgers in a blockbuster trade this past weekend? Maybe. But as I wrote the other day:
“This deal has become the lightning rod for virtually every debate about money in baseball: How much wealth inequality distorts competitive balance, whether a salary cap would actually address that problem — my take is that it wouldn’t, nor is that really the goal — and whether fixing any of it is worth a lockout that could threaten next season and destroy baseball’s recent momentum.
So, you know, pretty small stakes.”
In other words, the big deal was also, well, a big deal. And the plot thickened Tuesday night, when Skubal made his debut in (literal) Dodger Blue against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.
The game offered ammunition for both Dodger supporters and haters alike. Skubal pitched fairly well, allowing just a couple of runs with 6 strikeouts in 6.0 innings. But at the same time, he gave up two walks and four hits — his WHIP (walks+hits/innings pitched) is usually below 1.000 — including a home run against Dansby Swanson. He left the game with the Dodgers trailing, and ended up taking the loss in his debut. Skubal’s Game Score (a Bill James metric encapsulating a starting pitcher’s performance) was just 60, which — while above the league’s average of 51 — contributed to a trend of good-not-great outings for Skubal in most of this season.
After returning from an elbow injury that cost him about six weeks of action earlier this year, his 10-start rolling average now sits at 61.3 — and his average Game Score across 17 starts this season is 60.9, down from 64.2 in 2025. For comparison, over a 10-start stretch from May through early July 2025, Skubal’s rolling average hovered around 70. He has still flashed that old dominance at times — including consecutive scores of 76 in July — but Skubal’s starts have trended more toward “solid” than “overwhelming” lately.
And the Dodgers have been far from overwhelming in their own right. They haven’t won a game yet this month, and are 8-9 since the All-Star break. In the Elo ratings, which track a team’s current “form” after adjusting for the strength of their opponents, Los Angeles has been surpassed by the rival Milwaukee Brewers for the top spot in the league, and the red-hot Red Sox and Cubs are coming up on them quickly, too. Their current full-season pace of 98.1 wins is the lowest it’s been since May 18, and the prediction market has even backed off a bit from the peak World Series odds of 41% it assigned to LA on Monday.
But somehow, I don’t think the Dodgers are worried — nor is the rest of baseball feeling particularly good, despite LA’s mini-slump. Like an NBA team coasting through the regular season in February or March, the Dodgers’ August results are largely irrelevant to the big-picture question of their championship viability. Even if they lose out on a Top-2 seed in the NL — and therefore a first-round postseason bye — they have the talent for that to merely be a speed-bump, as it was just last year.
LA did not trade for Skubal to win every game in early August. And even if Skubal is merely very good rather than untouchable, he still joins a rotation with Yoshinobu Yamamoto and a bunch of other big names — a group whose collective October ceiling remains comically high. While the Cubs won Tuesday’s battle, the Dodgers are still winning the broader war until proven otherwise.
📊 CHART OF THE DAY
Survey says
Nothing says football is in the air quite like the releasing of preseason polls, and we got the first major one of those Tuesday with the first edition of this season’s AFCA Coaches Poll. The results were fairly predictable — Ohio State was No. 1, Oregon No. 2, with Georgia, Texas and Notre Dame also ranked highly. One item of note was the defending champion — Indiana — sitting just sixth. And if we plot out prediction market College Football Playoff odds against the rankings (see below), it’s clear that Notre Dame, Miami and Texas Tech have more of a CFP path than the rankings give them credit for, while a trio of SEC squads (Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Ole Miss) — and to a lesser extent, USC and BYU — have worse odds than their rankings indicate. Also of note: Louisville (25%), James Madison (20%), Florida (19%) and South Carolina (16%) have real playoff odds despite not actually going into the season ranked.
❄️ STAY FROSTY
What else we’re reading
Smart, short reads we liked while building today’s odds.
⚾ “Shohei Ohtani’s Days as a Starting Pitcher May Be Over” by Edward Egros
🏈 “The Four Ways to Build a College Football Team in 2026” by Ray Carpenter
🏒 “2026-27 NHL Stanley Cup Contender Tiers” by Mark Scheig
🏀▶️ “When is an NBA player actually ‘Ring Chasing’?” by Kofie Yeboah
⚾ “‘Every Team Could Trade For Me’” by Jeff Kallman
⚾ “Sorry, But Baseball Is Not Doing Fine” by Michael Weinreb
⚾ “Four homers in a game – when will someone hit five?” by Mark Kolier
👀 EYES UP
Next on deck…
Thursday (8/6)
⚾ MLB: Padres at D-Backs
🏀 WNBA: Aces at Fever
🏈 NFL Hall of Fame Game: Panthers vs. Cardinals - NFL preseason begins! 🎉
⛳ Golf: Wyndham Championship (Sedgefield Country Club - Greensboro, NC) - Round 1
Friday (8/7)
⚾ MLB: Braves at Yankees - 1996 World Series rematch!
🏀 WNBA: Valkyries at Wings
⚽ NWSL: Gotham FC at San Diego Wave
⛳ Golf: Wyndham Championship - Round 2
Saturday (8/8)
⚾ MLB: Braves at Yankees
🏀 WNBA: Aces at Lynx
⚽ NWSL: Washington at North Carolina
⚽ Leagues Cup: C.F. Monterrey at Inter Miami CF
⛳ Golf: Wyndham Championship - Round 3
🧠 Looking ahead
Stay tuned for more updates and in-depth analysis of these events and more as they unfold. We’ll be bringing you all the scores, highlights, and expert commentary.
Got a favorite team or sport you want us to cover more? Let us know!
All data current as of time of send.
— by Neil Paine
*Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.