Cubs at Blue Jays prediction: Odds, expert picks, starting pitchers, betting trends, and stats for August 14
Matthew Boyd is slated to take the mound for Chicago against Max Scherzer for Toronto.
The Cubs evened the series yesterday with a 4-1 win. Rookie Cade Horton was the story allowing just one hit and one run over 5.2 innings enroute to his seventh win of the season. Matt Shaw and Michael Busch each went deep for Chicago. The Jays' attack was held in check all day. The home team was limited to two hits while striking out ten times.
Lets dive into this afternoon's matchup and find a sweat or two.
We've got all the info and analysis you need to know ahead of the game, including the latest info on the how to catch the first pitch, odds, recent team performance, player stats, and of course, our predictions, picks & best bets for the game from our modeling tools and staff of experts.
Follow Rotoworld Player News for the latest fantasy and betting player news and analysis all season long.
Game details & how to watch Cubs at Blue Jays
Date: Thursday, August 14, 2025
Time: 3:07PM EST
Site: Rogers Centre
City: Toronto, ON
Network/Streaming: MARQ, Sportsnet
Never miss a second of the action and stay up-to-date with all the latest team stats and player news. Check out our day-by-day MLB schedule page, along with detailed matchup pages that update live in-game with every out.
Odds for the Cubs at the Blue Jays
The latest odds as of Thursday:
Moneyline: Cubs (-108), Blue Jays (-111)
Spread: Blue Jays 1.5
Total: 8.0 runs
Probable starting pitchers for Cubs at Blue Jays
Pitching matchup for August 14, 2025: Matthew Boyd vs. Max Scherzer
Cubs: Matthew Boyd (11-5, 2.46 ERA)
Last outing: August 8 at St. Louis - 5.40 ERA, 3 Earned Runs Allowed, 7 Hits Allowed, 0 Walks, and 3 StrikeoutsBlue Jays: Max Scherzer (2-2, 4.21 ERA)
Last outing: August 8 at Dodgers - 3.00 ERA, 2 Earned Runs Allowed, 6 Hits Allowed, 3 Walks, and 5 Strikeouts
Cubs: Matthew Boyd (11-5, 2.46 ERA)
Last outing: August 8 at St. Louis - 5.40 ERA, 3 Earned Runs Allowed, 7 Hits Allowed, 0 Walks, and 3 Strikeouts
Blue Jays: Max Scherzer (2-2, 4.21 ERA)
Last outing: August 8 at Dodgers - 3.00 ERA, 2 Earned Runs Allowed, 6 Hits Allowed, 3 Walks, and 5 Strikeouts
Rotoworld still has you covered with all the latest MLB player news for all 30 teams. Check out the feed page right here on NBC Sports for headlines, injuries and transactions where you can filter by league, team, positions and news type!
Top betting trends & insights to know ahead of Cubs at Blue Jays
The Cubs have won 22 of their 38 games against American League teams this season
The Blue Jays' last 4 games against the Cubs have stayed under the Total
Max Scherzer has struck out 5, 5, and 11 hitters in his last 3 starts
Pete Crow-Armstrong was 0-4 yesterday and is now 3-41 (.073) for the month of August
If you're looking for more key trends and stats around the spread, moneyline and total for every single game on the schedule today, check out our MLB Top Trends tool on NBC Sports!
Expert picks & predictions for today's game between the Cubs and the Blue Jays
Please bet responsibly. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call the National Gambling Helpline at 1-800-522-4700.
Our model calculates projections around each moneyline, spread and over/under bet for every game on the MLB calendar based on data points like past performance, player matchups, ballpark information and weather forecasts.
Once the model is finished running, we put its projection next to the latest betting lines for the game to arrive at a relative confidence level for each wager.
Here are the best bets our model is projecting for Thursday's game between the Cubs and the Blue Jays:
Moneyline: NBC Sports Bet is recommending a play on the Chicago Cubs on the Moneyline.
Spread: NBC Sports Bet is leaning towards a play ATS on the Chicago Cubs at +1.5.
Total: NBC Sports Bet is leaning towards a play on the over on the Game Total of 8.0.
Want even more MLB best bets and predictions from our expert staff & tools? Check out the Expert MLB Predictions page from NBC
Follow our experts on socials to keep up with all the latest content from the staff:
Jay Croucher (@croucherJD)
Drew Dinsick (@whale_capper)
Vaughn Dalzell (@VmoneySports)
Brad Thomas (@MrBradThomas)

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Despite a strong MLB Draft, the Washington Nationals Farm System ranks low
Following the MLB Draft and the trade deadline, both Baseball America and MLB Pipeline updated their farm system rankings. Despite the Nationals having the number 1 pick and having a strong draft, their system is ranked in the bottom half of baseball. Baseball America ranks the Nationals farm as the 21st best, while MLB Pipeline ranks them 23rd. Given the Washington Nationals struggles at the big league level, it is discouraging to see the farm this lowly ranked. For me, the biggest factors in this are graduations, the Travis Sykora injury and the disappointing performances from the 2024 Draft Class. In their last four updates, MLB Pipeline ranked the Nationals farm system at 8th, 12th, 10th and 13th. However, since those updates guys like James Wood, Dylan Crews and Brady House all graduated. Those are three top 100 prospects who are now not prospects anymore. However, the best farm systems are the ones that are able to replenish and find the next batch of talent. That is how teams like the Dodgers and Brewers are always at the top of these rankings. Under Mike Rizzo, the Nationals had a hard time restocking the prospect pool. One of the big reasons why they rank this low is because the 2024 draft class has been a dud so far. Guys like Seaver King, Luke Dickerson and Caleb Lomavita have had slow starts to their pro careers. Lomavita has the highest OPS of the trio at a mediocre .702. Baseball America mentioned that the Nationals really need one of their position player prospects to break out. The Nats were hoping that Seaver King or Luke Dickerson could do that this year, but they have not been able to. That is a big reason why the system is not ranked higher. However, there are still positives to talk about. The 2025 draft class should breathe new life into this system in the coming years. Guys like Eli Willits, Ethan Petry, Landon Harmon, Miguel Sime Jr., and Coy James all have big upside. Petry has already made his pro debut and got a base hit. This is my favorite Nationals draft in a long time and they should help the system rise through the ranks. However, they have yet to prove themselves as professionals. They need to show that their talent translates. However, these five guys should give the Nationals system a jolt of life. Another guy who is on the rise is Jarlin Susana. Since coming back from his elbow injury, Susana has been dominant. He has allowed only five runs in his five outings since coming back. Susana has also struck out 31 in 18.2 innings in that time. He is holding his triple digit velocity deep into his starts and looks like a special talent. Overall, the farm system is not where you would want it to be for a team that has been picking at the top of the draft for years. That inability to develop is a big reason why Mike Rizzo was fired. The 2024 draft class has also looked like a real disappointment so far, with Seaver King and Luke Dickerson really struggling. However, it is not all doom and gloom on the farm. There is some really fun pitching talent and the 2025 draft looks great on paper. It is an exciting but imperfect farm system that should rise up the ranks with proper development. There are pieces for the next GM to develop. However, we need to see the player development improve for the Nats to become a sustainable winner.


New York Times
29 minutes ago
- New York Times
What the historically lousy play at Oracle Park tells us about the 2025 Giants
The San Francisco Giants have lost 13 out of their last 14 games at Oracle Park. That's not a record, but it sure doesn't happen very often. Only one team had a stretch that bad throughout the entire 1980s, for example, and the last time the Giants did it was 1940. Some of the original 16 MLB teams haven't done it in over 100 years. Only 11 teams in history have lost 14 games in a row at home, which means the Giants are now in a tie for the second-worst 14-game home park stretch in baseball history. It's a 74-way tie, and you have to use the cherry-picked endpoint, but it still gives you a sense of how uncommon this kind of home futility is. Advertisement That would be a discouraging standalone tidbit, but it gets even worse. The Giants lost their final game of the homestand by 10 runs … which is exactly how many runs they've scored in the six games to start the homestand. They've scored 25 runs over these 14 games, which means they've been outscored 25-65 over their last 14 home games. The paid attendance for those games was 533,045, which is roughly a quarter of the season attendance so far. There have been more fans who watched the Giants at home during this stretch than there were in the entire 1974 or 1975 seasons, and they got to watch those 13 losses stretch out over the 129 innings. They've led in four of those innings. What sticks with me, though, other than all the losing in front of people who paid to watch exactly the opposite, is the company they're keeping. Among the 43 teams that have lost at least 13 games out of 14 at home since the Giants moved to San Francisco, here are the best final winning percentages from them: 1971 White Sox — .488 2018 Mets — .475 1994 Red Sox — .470 2002 Mets — .466 1975 Angels — .447 There are two teams to do this and finish with a winning record — Cleveland in 1931 and Detroit in 1956 — but that was before the Giants' San Francisco era. There's an obvious reason for this — if you start any team with a 1-13 record in any split, they'll need to play .543 baseball over the remainder of the season to get back to .500. That's an 88-win pace, and most of these teams couldn't fake that kind of play for a couple weeks, much less several months. But how many of these 13-of-14-ers even had a .500 record if you removed the historically lousy home stretch? That's a more interesting question, suggesting a team that's oh-so close to being perfectly OK and even competitive, if not for that one unthinkable stretch where nothing went their way. Only the top four teams on that list played .500 outside of the losing stretch, which means that it's difficult to fake your way into an inability to win at home. A team that does this is probably just bad, not unlucky. Advertisement Which brings us to the most remarkable part, at least to me: These aren't garden-variety losers. These are the worst teams of all time. The 2024 White Sox are on there, of course, but so is the team whose modern-day record they broke, the 1962 Mets. There are several expansion teams on there, including the 1969 Expos. There are teams that were so historically awful over decades that their cities told them to get out and not come back (Philadelphia Athletics and St. Louis Browns). It's also impressive to think about the teams that didn't lose 13 out of 14 at home, like the butt-slide-era Astros or the 2003 Tigers (who were sneaky good at incubating championship outfields). The 2025 Rockies are not in this group, at least not yet. If you want to throw a smoke bomb and leave the vomitorium of sad factlets, I don't blame you. It's not like I'm saving a fun one for the end. What we're getting at here is that the Giants are keeping company with some of the worst teams in baseball history. The 14-game stretch is an arbitrary endpoint, but it still includes things that are hard to fake. Of the five teams that played .500 ball outside of the home losing streak, only four of them had winning records the following season. None of them won more than 87 games. Even the redemption stories are kinda sad. Armed with this information, we get to something that sets the Giants apart from all these teams: They're actually trying. They're not the afterthought of some early-century steel baron. I'm not about to research the relative payrolls of every bad team throughout history, but the Giants are trying harder than almost any of these teams. They had high expectations. The losing jag started after a thrilling win against the Dodgers, which in turn came after a thrilling series win against the Phillies at home. When Will Smith hit into a double play to end that win against the Dodgers, listen to how excited the crowd was: They're excited because that was one of the expected possible outcomes for a team that you actually respect. A good team, a contending team, can get a double play with two on and one out in the ninth. It wasn't the likeliest scenario, but once it happened, it felt entirely natural. The Giants, why, they're just one of those teams that knows how to win close games. They've done it all year. Then they stopped. And how. Advertisement In my decades of following the team, I'm not sure I've watched a Giants team that's anything even close to this one. They're probably the most confounding team in San Francisco history, and I'm not sure it's even close. That franchise history includes several teams that had trouble scoring runs with Barry Bonds hitting .899/.999/3.999 in the middle of the order, but this team has them licked. Back then the solution was simple: Get better players around Bonds. Don't get sucked into the Brower-Eyre trap. This team, though? They mostly just need everyone to be better versions of themselves, and the best-worst part is that you've seen it from every single player with expectations. Jung Hoo Lee, Heliot Ramos, Willy Adames, Matt Chapman and Rafael Devers have all had hot stretches this season where you think, yep, that's what he's supposed to do. That's why the Giants got (player). They're never lengthy hot stretches, and the laws of Newtonian physics apparently prevents any two of them from being hot at the same time, but you have 5/9ths of a lineup that should be good right now, while also having a strong chance to be productive next season (with the jury still out on Lee). That's just the lineup, too. With Robbie Ray and Logan Webb both All-Stars under contract for next season, the Giants also have a head start on the rotation. It'll need some additions and tweaks, not a major overhaul, to be the kind of rotation that worries opponents in the postseason. That's also 40 percent of the rotation that's currently contributing to the historically miserable home ballpark experience. Which means that we'll be right back here next season to discuss a lot of the same players who are contributing to the slide right now. There are no other options. The most important parts of the 2026 Giants are set in stone, and while there could still be important contributors we're not accounting for now — rookies, free agents, players acquired in a trade, minor-league free agents who break out, et cetera — the bulk of the important contributors aren't going anywhere. And it's even reasonable to expect them to rebound. The famously fussy and pessimistic projection systems should even predict as much. And unlike the typical also-ran, it's not a bad plan. This isn't one of those things where you need to dig up the apocryphal quote from Albert Einstein about the definition of insanity. The definition of insanity is probably assuming that all of the Giants' best hitters are cooked forever, not trying the same thing and expecting different results. That's almost what they have to do. If the players have to stick around — and if it's the only reasonable option — the Giants will have to improve as an organization when it comes to making them the best versions of themselves. I've never been the kind of pundit that's called for people's jobs, at least, not since 2010, but it's not hard to start connecting dots with the Giants' predicament. The players aren't going anywhere. Can't go anywhere. Shouldn't go anywhere, in a lot of cases. If they can't be swapped out for someone more effective, the next step is to look for ways to make the existing players more effective. Because whatever's going on this season can't be sustainable. It's just bad business for the Giants to play like this. Ask the half-million fans who paid money to watch them play like some of the worst baseball teams in history. It's possible they are one of the worst baseball teams in history, but I still can't believe that yet. Too much talent. Until they prove otherwise, they'll remain one of the most confounding teams in franchise history. There's still a little bit of season left. They might end up the most confounding team in franchise history. Hey, at least there's still something to root for. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Former All-Star explains what Yankees must change
The post Former All-Star explains what Yankees must change appeared first on ClutchPoints. Amidst a struggling 2025 season, the New York Yankees held their annual Old-Timers' Day at Yankee Stadium, with a legends game returning for the first time since 2019, featuring four-time World Series champion catcher Jorge Posada. The five-time All-Star, who spent his entire 17-year career in pinstripes, talked about this year's squad and what it can do to turn things around. It's been the Yankees' worst rut in 34 years. New York has lost 20 of its last 26 games. For Posada, the Yankees need to change their overall mindset, which is something he says differentiates the old school Yankees of the 1990s and 2000s from now, per SNY's Chelsea Sherrod. 'It's just more of an attitude than anything,' Posada said. 'Just got to get a little angry. Hopefully, a fight or something that happens. Not a fight, but something that happens that gets them going again.' Attitude is key for Jorge Posada if the Yankees hope to turn their recent losses, including Friday's 5-3 defeat to the Houston Astros, into wins. 'They need to have that chip on their shoulders,' Posada added. 'The players, you have to play like that. You can't be friends with everybody.' The Yankees are now 3.5 games behind the Boston Red Sox in the AL East and 6.5 games behind the Toronto Blue Jays at the top of the division. Insider predicts Yankees will miss the MLB playoffs After a very disappointing July, August hasn't looked much better for the Yankees' chances of turning their fortunes around. One MLB insider predicts the Yankees will miss the playoffs as they could be running out of time to turn things around. When asked if the Yankees can still clinch, MLB insider Jim Bowden didn't hesitate in his response, per Foul Territory TV. 'I'm gonna go no,' Bowden said. 'I'm gonna go no because I really love the AL West's three teams right now. I think what Seattle [Mariners] did at the deadline, I think they can get to the World Series. I've been on Texas' [Rangers] bandwagon… And Houston's [Astros] not going away… 'The vibe in New York is not great. They're not playing well,' continued Bowden… 'And I'm worried about Aaron Judge. The way the Yankees announced his injury, they said it was a 'no acute injury' to the ulnar collateral ligament. Then they said there's a PRP injection. So, that means there's a tear in the ulnar collateral ligament,' Bowden concluded. The Yankees will host the Astros on Saturday. Related: New York fans express relief after Yankees squeak by Astros Related: Yankees fans will love Derek Jeter's heartwarming message