Philadelphia Phillies vs Chicago Cubs Prediction, Odds and Picks for Today, 04/22/26

The Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs play a day game at Wrigley on Wednesday. That means we need to ask first about the weather, which will be in the 50s with a mild breeze blowing in. Nothing too game-altering. The Cubs have won the first two games in the series, and in fact have beaten the Phillies 5 times in the past 10 days. The Phillies have now dropped 7 games in a row, and if the Mets win a game anytime soon, the attention will immediately flip to the struggling Phillies. The Cubs are in a great position to win again on Wednesday, but the price point isn’t very playable. Instead, I am going to pivot to the game total over 8.5.

We have a rich hitting setup for both offenses. The Phillies will throw Taijuan Walker, a man we all love to pick on. The Phillies don’t want to be starting Walker, and they likely won’t do so after Zack Wheeler returns in the coming days. His ERA is just a shade under 10.00. The Cubs will welcome back Matthew Boyd, The lefty has been on the IL with an arm injury all month, so we might not see a great outing, and almost certainly not a long outing, from Boyd. Also bear in mind that both teams lost their closers to oblique/lat issues in the past week, and that has both bullpens scrambling. That all just seems to add up to an advantage for the bats. I’ll take the over.

Phillies vs Cubs prediction: Over 8.5 (-110) available at time of publishing. Playable at that number.