Chicago Cubs vs Los Angeles Dodgers Prediction, Odds and Picks for Today, 04/26/26

The Los Angeles Dodgers bounced back from a series-opening loss on Friday with a convincing 12-4 win over the Cubs on Saturday. Chicago’s Colin Rea started the game just fine, but the World Series champions eventually plated 6 runs off him before doing the exact same thing to Javier Assad – who appeared in relief of Rea after 3.1 innings of work. Oddly enough, it was the bottom half of the lineup that did most of the damage for LA, as 9 of their 14 hits and 8 of their 11 RBIs came from spots 5-9 in the lineup.

We have a battle of lefties on our hands Sunday in LA, as Shota Imanaga toes the rubber for Chicago while Justin Wrobleski gets the start for the Dodgers. Both pitchers have sterling ERAs and WHIPs, but despite similarly good marks in both categories, these pitchers go about their business differently. Imanaga is a strikeout pitcher, earning 32 in 29 innings of work. Meanwhile, Wrobleski pitches to more contact, as he has struck out just 9 batters in 24 innings. That said, he induced 10 more groundouts than Imagana in 5 fewer innings. 

The question boils down to: can Imanaga maintain his 14.6% swinging strike rate against this LA lineup? In 50 career at-bats against the Dodgers, Imanaga has earned just 11 strikeouts, which is a K-rate 22% – quite a bit lower than his current 29.6% mark. Further, his 12% walk rate against this lineup is also almost triple his career average, so I remain pessimistic about his chances of limiting LA at home – especially considering the Dodgers are 2nd in the league in OBP and 3rd in slugging against lefties. 

For as good as the Dodgers are against lefties, the Cubs are even better – leading the league in OBP and slugging with the 2nd-most at-bats against southpaws. That could be bad news for Wrobleski given his lack of strikeout upside early this year. His 1.88 ERA is absolutely beautiful on the surface, but a 3.83 xERA, 4.88 xFIP and 5.27 SIERA suggest regression is looming, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it come today against a lineup that is notoriously strong against lefties. 

As always, the weather in LA will be beautiful for baseball. Temperatures will be in the high 60s and the wind is projected to be blowing out at around 14 MPH. All signs point to an offensive outburst from both teams on Sunday, especially with very minimal travel involved after this one concludes. 

Cubs vs Dodgers best bet: Over 9 (-105) at the time of publishing. Playable to -120. 

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