I don't think there are any big surprises here; I suspect our balloting will come pretty close to matching the BBWAA awards

In order for the tables to fit better, you'll have to click "Continue reading this post" to find them. For MVP's, we voted for the top 10 instead of the top 3, and points were allocated as follows: 14 points for first place, then 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 for 2nd through 9th.

My ballot: 1) Pujols 2) Wright 3) Beltran 4) Howard 5) A. Ramirez 6) Berkman 7) H. Ramirez 8) Braun 9) Delgado 10) Soto

Mike's ballot: 1) Howard 2) Pujols 3) Wright 4) Berkman 5) Delgado 6) Braun 7) Utley 8) H. Ramirez 9) A. Ramirez 10) Soto

Continue reading this post »

Tim Lincecum was an obvious choice, though I suspect if CC Sabathia had wound up undefeated in the NL (instead of 11-2), it might have gone to him.

I find myself puzzled by the vote for Justin Duchscherer.

Voting, as for ROY and MOY, was 5-3-1.

My ballot: 1) Lincecum 2) Santana 3) Dempster

Mike's ballot: 1) Lincecum 2) Webb 3) Dempster

If the Cubs' attempted comeback in the 9th inning today -- they did manage to get the tying run on base with one out -- had been successful, I'd have thrown up my hands in amazement, and there's already been a sufficient amount of amazement in this so-far-wonderful season.

They didn't, and you know what? Some days the other guy is just better than you. When facing a pitcher as good as Tim Lincecum -- and he had one of his better days today, giving up six hits and striking out nine -- you have very little margin for error, either, as Jack Brickhouse used to say, errors of commission or errors of omission, and the Cubs made just enough mistakes to result in a a 4-2 loss to the Giants, which, oddly, didn't feel quite as bad as yesterday's win.

Strange, I know. Here's where the game turned: on Mark DeRosa's ill-advised attempt to scoop Lincecum's sinking liner with a runner on first and one out in a scoreless game in the top of the third inning. Most other runners would have circled the bases for an inside-the-park HR as the ball went all the way to the wall, but Lincecum was held up with an RBI triple. It could have been charged an error (of "commission"), but wasn't, since DeRo never touched the ball. After a walk, a stolen base and a popup, the second error -- this one of omission -- happened.

There's no way Ryan Dempster should have pitched to Ray Durham. It wasn't a favorable matchup, Durham had had a good series so far (4-for-9 with a walk and two runs scored before today); Lou should have ordered him intentionally walked. Yes, in the third inning, because that early in the game, down 1-0 to a pitcher as good as Lincecum, you've got to keep the damage to a minimum. With the bases loaded and the unbelievably slow Bengie Molina due up next, you've got a real good shot at a forceout to end the inning.

Instead, Durham ran the count full and singled in two runs. The Cubs got one back on Jim Edmonds' double following a DeRosa walk, but that was it till Dempster got into trouble in the seventh, allowing the fourth and final run.

That set up a possible rally in the last of the 8th -- two singles brought Aramis Ramirez to bat with one out, and today's giveaway was a blue T-shirt with A-Ram's name and number on the back. Perhaps you saw virtually everyone in the bleachers waving the shirts, a sea of Cubbie blue -- very cool sight. Unfortunately, this time A-Ram had no drama for us, hitting into a double play.

Chad Gaudin showed us today why Jim Hendry and Lou Piniella wanted him so badly -- he threw two solid scoreless innings, keeping the team in the game till the bottom of the ninth, when a walk to Edmonds and two singles, including one by Geovany Soto as a pinch-hitter (thank you, Lou, for giving him the day off from catching today!) generated the second run, and brought up Daryle Ward, who's been so good as a pinch-hitter this year. He took two very close pitches after 0-2, both called balls, and then watched strike three go right down the center of the plate. Ryan Theriot grounded out to end the game... but give this team credit for at least getting that tying run on base in the 9th against one of the league's better closers, Brian Wilson, who was throwing 98 MPH and who, with today's save, passed Kerry Wood to take over the league lead with 25.

Wood, for his part, won't pitch in the All-Star Game, resting his blistered finger (an excellent idea), and has been replaced by Carlos Marmol, giving the Cubs a record-tying eight All-Stars. Now, only four, maybe five (Kosuke Fukudome, Soto, Ramirez, Carlos Zambrano and Marmol) will play, since Wood isn't available, and neither is Alfonso Soriano, and with a 118-pitch outing today, neither will Dempster. It seems very likely -- since Lincecum threw 116 pitches today, and Brandon Webb also pitched today -- that Zambrano, who last pitched on Wednesday and who won't go until at least next Saturday or Sunday, could be the starter for the National League on Tuesday. The choice of Marmol is odd, with Lou wanting him to rest and his poor June and July, but wouldn't it be even odder if he got his act back on track throwing an inning in the All-Star Game?

The old saw "You can't win 'em all" is so true today -- the Cubs ran into a really good pitcher and he beat 'em. It happens. They finish the first half with a 37-12 home record and remain 4.5 games in first place. Really, could we ask for better than this, at this moment in time?

Today, BCB reader drewishdruid and his lovely bride joined us, with their sign (did any of you spot it? They were holding it up at every inning break), along with BCB reader nside and his family, up from Indiana. They got nice weather and nice company, even with no victory. We move on to the second half after all of us take a much-needed break, with high hopes for the rest of this season. It's been wonderful. Hang on for the rest of the ride -- the best is yet to come.

I'll open threads for the Home Run Derby tomorrow and, of course, the game on Tuesday night.

a) A glass half empty
b) A glass half full
c) When is it going to spill?

That's an old Cub fan joke, and maybe it isn't that funny, especially after another bad-looking loss, 8-3 to the Giants, but if you're getting that "sky is falling" feeling this morning, think about this: You could be a Brewers fan, having just watched your team blow a five-run ninth inning lead to the Diamondbacks and lose 6-5 when three Milwaukee relievers faced seven Arizona hitters in the 9th and got none of them out.

Or, you could be a Cardinals fan, having just watched your team get blown out 11-1 by a mediocre Mets team (remember? the team the Cubs beat 7-1 and 8-1 in Chicago in April?) and having Tony LaRussa treat one of his kid starters, Mitchell Boggs, like he did Jason Marquis two years ago and leave him on the mound for six innings to take an 10-hit, 6-walk, 11-run pounding.

Feel better now? Since Carlos Zambrano walked off the mound in Tampa on June 18, making all of us cringe as he called the coaching and training staff out to look at his right shoulder, the Cubs are 6-8. Yet, they have lost exactly one game of their division lead since that date, and tonight Z takes the mound in St. Louis in a matchup of the teams with the two best records in the National League, in a series the Cubs really have to win, if for no other reason than to actually prove to themselves that they can win a series on the road -- they haven't since the series I attended in Toronto three weekends ago.

They should have won the series in San Francisco instead of splitting it -- especially after scoring three runs off Tim Lincecum, a run total he's allowed only six times in his 18 starts this year. Sean Gallagher had one bad inning, the second, in which he allowed all four of his runs, and the last one scored when Geovany Soto dropped a Ray Durham popup that allowed the fourth (unearned) run to score. In fairness, the wind was howling pretty good yesterday and that took the ball from foul to fair territory, away from Geovany. Still, if he catches it, Mark DeRosa's two-run double in the sixth would have tied the game instead of just making it 4-3 and then who knows?

What I do know is that Jose Ascanio is likely headed back to Iowa today when Z is activated (and Gallagher's headed to the bullpen). Despite having a good arm, Ascanio has had a penchant for helping turn close games into blowouts. He did it last Sunday at the Cell when he allowed a two-run HR by Jim Thome that turned a 3-1 deficit into a virtually insurmountable 5-1 lead, and again yesterday when he misplayed Omar Vizquel's bunt. Vizquel is an excellent bunter, but the one in the 7th yesterday might have been turned into a double play with a better-fielding pitcher. At the very least it should have resulted in an out; Lou had very little patience with his bullpen yesterday, pulling Ascanio right after that and then yanking his replacement, Carlos Marmol, after Marmol threw exactly three pitches to Rich Aurilia, the third of which was deposited in the LF bleachers to make the score 7-3, effectively ending the game.

You want to worry about Marmol? Go ahead, because so am I (and so is Lou). Including his meltdown in Tampa on June 19, Marmol in his last seven appearances has pitched five innings, allowed five hits, seven walks and three HR for ten earned runs and an 18.00 ERA. I don't know what's wrong with him; if he's hurt he needs to get to the DL, and if he's not, something has to be turned around quickly because the Cubs can't win games without him.

The shadows at Phone Holding Company Park weren't a factor till about the seventh inning; at game time the entire field was still in bright sunshine, but that didn't help the Cubs hit Tim Lincecum that well. He still struck out eight in his six innings.

So while you might think things are collapsing, take heart. Z returns tonight. Alfonso Soriano's going to start hitting off a tee tonight, in anticipation of a rehab assignment and possibly a return by next weekend. The Cubs still have the third-best record in baseball, behind the Rays and Angels, and maintain a 2.5 game division lead.

Thank heavens, injured and absent Cubs will begin to return today.

Aramis Ramirez, in the Dominican Republic the last three days for the birth of a child, will return in time for today's odd-starting-time 4 pm (PDT) game, and Reed Johnson will be activated from the DL (starting the guessing game: who goes? Matt Murton and Eric Patterson are the likely choices, and I'm thinking it's Murton, since he's a right-handed-hitting outfielder and so is Johnson). And tomorrow, Carlos Zambrano will return from the DL to start against the Cardinals and smartly, the Cubs will send him ahead to St. Louis early today to rest up.

And so, after last night's 6-5 win over the Giants, achieved with the help of a tiebreaking HR by the littlest Cub, 5-7 Mike Fontenot, the Cubs will have a real shot at accomplishing what they needed to coming into this series, a series win, three of four, despite facing the toughest pitcher on the Giants' staff, Tim Lincecum.

Once again, I didn't see most of this game, having to wake at 3 am for work. For the third day in a row, my feeling upon shutting the TV off was how the game finished: I was confident they'd win Monday night, had a feeling they wouldn't come back on Tuesday, and again felt good last night, as Ryan Dempster started off well and even though they should have scored more runs in the second inning, having loaded the bases with nobody out. Dempster should have had his 10th win, but Carlos Marmol had yet another shaky outing. Thanks to Jim Edmonds and Fontenot, and Kerry Wood's 21st save (and even that could have been better), the Cubs maintained their 2.5 game lead over the Cardinals, who waited out a long rain delay and came from behind to beat the Mets 8-7. (Mets. Remember them? Supposed to run away with the NL? They're two games under .500.)

Getting back to Lincecum for a moment, Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated wrote a long feature on Lincecum which was the cover story in this week's issue, which arrived in my mailbox yesterday -- say, with the fabled SI cover jinx, maybe that's a good sign for the Cubs. Much of the article deals with how Lincecum, not a large man, throws as hard as he does with his unusual mechanics. In discussing mechanics, Verducci goes into detail about a certain former Employee of the Cubs:

Mark Prior is a classic example of a high-performing pitcher who was permitted to break down because of poor mechanics. Ironically, Prior was often hailed for his "flawless" mechanics when the Cubs drafted the righthander out of USC with the No. 2 pick in 2001, though that assessment seems to have been influenced by scouts' preference for his 6' 5", 225-pound body type. Studied closely, his mechanics included two severe red flags: 1) Prior lifted his throwing elbow higher than his shoulder before reaching the loaded position, increasing the stress on his elbow and shoulder; and 2) unlike Lincecum's dynamic late torso rotation, Prior rotated his hips and torso before getting to the loaded position. With the letters of Prior's jersey already facing the target, his arm could not simply "go along for the ride" -- the ride was over, so his arm had to generate all of its own power.

So now we know. Verducci also writes about former Cub #1 draft pick Bobby Brownlie:

Bobby Brownlie was supposed to be Tim Lincecum. A 6-foot righthander from Rutgers who hit 97 mph on the gun, Brownlie was regarded as one of the top pitchers in the 2002 draft. [Rick] Peterson was working as the A's pitching coach at the time. Just before the draft, Oakland G.M. Billy Beane gave Peterson videotapes of some 20 pitchers the A's were considering as draft picks and told him to break down each pitcher not by stuff and performance but by the biomechanics of their deliveries.

The previous winter Peterson had met Brownlie at a banquet and told him, "Hey, I hear you're great. Congratulations, I hear you're going to be a [first round] pick." But when he watched Brownlie on the tape Beane had given him, Peterson says, "I'm literally sick to my stomach. I'm going, 'This is so sad.' "

A few days later, when Beane asked Peterson what he thought of Brownlie, the pitching coach replied, "He has certain characteristics in his delivery that will lead to shoulder problems."

Bingo again. This article should be required reading not only for major league scouts, pitching coaches, managers and general managers, but for all young pitchers who have great arms -- there's a lot of hints in it, many of them from Tim Lincecum's dad, who helped him develop his unconventional style, on how to avoid injury by doing something that's not a natural human motion, pitching a baseball.

Onward to tonight. Let's win this series and then take two of three in St. Louis.