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Happy Monday, and welcome to a brand-new week in sports, where baseball remains as messy as ever. Instead of sorting contenders from pretenders, the teams who bought at the trade deadline have only gotten worse over the past few weeks, while the teams who sold have gotten better. We’ll dig into that confusing state of affairs, plus we remember the late Tommy John and the groundbreaking surgery that made his name synonymous with saving pitching careers. Elsewhere, the White Sox and Cubs meet in a Chicago showdown, the Lynx have crossed 50% WNBA title odds for the first time all season, and Scottie Scheffler remains the man to beat in the FedEx Cup playoffs after a dominating win over the weekend. Now that the week has flipped over again, here’s what we’re watching today:
🗓️ TONIGHT’S DANCE
The Main Events
All listed times are Eastern. 🚨= Elimination game
MLB:
⚾ Tigers (53%) at Pirates (47%) - 7:05 p.m. (ESPN)
⚾ Padres (47%) at Mets (53%) - 7:10 p.m. (MLB.tv / SNY)
⚾ White Sox (40%) at Cubs (60%) - 8:05 p.m. (MLB.tv)
⚾ Championship check-in: Dodgers 34% to win World Series
WNBA:
🏀 Wings (29%) at Valkyries (71%) - 10 p.m. (Peacock)
🏀 Championship check-in: Lynx 50% to win WNBA title - First time crossing 50% all season
Soccer:
⚽ La Liga: Elche CF (26%) at Deportivo La Coruña (45%) - 3 p.m. (ESPN+ / ESPN Deportes)
⚽ EPL Championship check-in: Arsenal 41% to win Premier League (New season starts 8/21)
⚽ MLS Championship check-in: Inter Miami 25% to win MLS Cup
⚽ NWSL Championship check-in: Gotham FC 32% to win
Football:
🏈 Super Bowl check-in: Rams 16% to win NFL championship
🏈 College Football Playoff check-in: Notre Dame and Ohio State 14% to win national title
Tennis:
🎾 Cincinnati Open - Men’s: Alexander Zverev 29% to win / Women’s: Aryna Sabalenka 17% to win
Golf:
⛳ FedEx Cup Playoffs: Scottie Scheffler 21% to win championship
🔍 FIND THE EDGE
Did anyone win the trade deadline?
As we covered ad nauseum a few weeks ago, MLB’s trade deadline is supposed to be the final day of reckoning for teams to decide whether to go all-in on the present or defer to the future. And certainly, most teams took some kind of decisive stance at the deadline, announcing themselves as buyers or sellers by either adding or subtracting net talent (in the form of Wins Above Replacement).
Normally, we’d expect those teams to then follow a predictable pattern — buyers get better and sellers get worse. In fact, we even expected that mechanism to help solve some of the traffic-jam in this year’s MLB standings, where a record number of teams were within striking distance of a playoff spot as of late July.
But then, the opposite has played out in reality thus far. Here’s a plot of net deadline WAR talent added minus subtracted, versus each team’s change in winning percentage since the start of August:
While some teams, like the Padres, Cubs, Rays, Phillies and Braves — or the Giants, Nationals and Royals, at the other end of the spectrum — have behaved like we’d expect from their deadline decision-making, they are exceptions to this year’s overall rule thus far. More often, teams who added net talent have lost more, while teams who sold talent are winning more. The correlation between talent added/subtracted at the deadline and change in winning percentage since is -0.194, meaning the bigger the buyer, the worse they’ve done.
The Dodgers are the biggest offender here, having seen their winning percentage drop from .627 before August to .333 ever since. Granted, the changing of the calendar has also coincided with a shift from them facing the league’s No. 1 easiest schedule by average opposing Elo rating to the No. 4 hardest schedule, but LA has also played worse baseball — the same that can be said for the Guardians, Twins, Pirates and Yankees, each of whom went into the month with higher playoff and/or World Series odds in the prediction markets than they currently possess. Meanwhile, teams who seemingly punted on the 2026 season — like the Mets, Tigers, Blue Jays, Cardinals, Orioles, Marlins, Angels and Rockies — have been among the most improved teams since making those moves.
As a result, the logjam in the standings remains as messy as ever, with about half of the available 12 MLB playoff slots still up for grabs for the SIXTEEN teams sitting between 8% and 83% playoff odds as of Monday. In other words, a deadline that was supposed to sort contenders from pretenders has mostly just scrambled them even further so far.
📊 CHART OF THE DAY
Tommy John’s legacy
When former MLB pitcher Tommy John died over the weekend, the first line of his obituary wasn’t actually his playing career — which included an impressive 288 wins and a 3.34 ERA over 26 years (!) in the big leagues. Instead, it was the eponymous medical procedure that made the majority of that career possible: Tommy John surgery, which uses tendon grafting to repair the ulnar collateral ligament in a patient’s elbow. Created by Dr. Frank Jobe and experimentally performed for the first time on John in 1974, the surgery has now helped thousands of players extend their careers over the past 50+ years, the same way it did for John — as 164 of those 288 wins came after what was considered at the time to be a career-ending injury.
❄️ STAY FROSTY
What else we’re reading
Smart, short reads we liked while building today’s odds.
⚾ “How to Supply a Productive Outfield Without Paying for One: Lessons from Tampa Bay” by Sean Smith
🏈 “Which Types of Passes Drive NFL Offensive Efficiency?” by Robbie Marriage
🎾 “How Tennis Got the Blues” by Ben Rothenberg
🏒 “PWHL Analytics” by Corsi Chronicles
⚾ “The Missing Piece in the Braves’ Pitching Lab Is Velocity” by Lindsay Crosby
👀 EYES UP
Next on deck…
Tuesday (8/18)
⚾ MLB: Yankees at Orioles
🏀 WNBA: Dream at Aces
⚽ UEFA Champions League Playoff: Fenerbahçe SK vs. Olympique Lyonnais
Wednesday (8/19)
⚾ MLB: Yankees at Orioles
🏀 WNBA: Lynx at Valkyries
⚽ UEFA Champions League Playoff: Celtic F.C. vs. LASK
⚽ MLS: Inter Miami CF at Philadelphia Union
Thursday (8/20)
⚾ MLB: Yankees at Orioles
🏀 WNBA: Fever at Wings
⚽ Copa Libertadores: Flamengo vs. Cruzeiro
⛳ Golf: FedEx Cup Playoffs: BMW Championship - Round 1
🏈 NFL preseason: 49ers at Chargers
🧠 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.