For the last two years, I've run a contest paralleling MLB.com's Free Agent Frenzy. (MLB.com login may be required to view that page.)

If you haven't done this before, here's how it works. MLB.com lists 15 top free agents -- we'll use the same ones -- and then you pick what team you think each player will sign with, and a number representing your confidence level in that signing, from 15 (most confident) to 1 (least confident). In other words, if you are 100% sure Ryan Dempster will re-sign with the Cubs, you'd give him 15 points. If you think he's back but you're less certain, give him fewer points. UPDATE TO CLARIFY THIS: Each number from 1 to 15 is given ONLY ONCE for the entire list of free agents; i.e. the guy you are most confident will sign with a particular team gets 15 points; the one you pick out of a hat gets 1 point.

Whoever has the most points after all 15 free agents on the list are signed wins. The prize this year will once again be a copy of Glenn Stout's "The Cubs", an excellent comprehensive history of the ballclub.

The 15 free agents are:

Bobby Abreu
Milton Bradley
A. J. Burnett
Pat Burrell
Ryan Dempster
Adam Dunn
Rafael Furcal
Derek Lowe
Oliver Perez
Manny Ramirez
Francisco Rodriguez
CC Sabathia
Ben Sheets
Mark Teixeira
Kerry Wood

Leave your picks in the comments. We'll use the same deadline as MLB's contest: 4 pm CT on Wednesday, November 12 (the day before free agents can sign with any team). I'll also need a volunteer to keep track of these and let me know who the winner is. I'm going to make picks; if somehow I win (highly unlikely!) the prize goes to the second place finisher. Good luck!

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 »

This is the one you've all been waiting for -- the thoughts I have about what sort of 25-man roster, including position players, pitching rotation and bullpen I think the Cubs should put on the field in 2009. I'm also going to make a comment or two on the coaching staff, which by and large did a fine job in 2008 (well, at least until October 1, they did). This is a long post, so I'm going to make you click through to read the rest, rather than show about 3,500 words on the front page. (You're about to find out why this took me so long!)

Continue reading this post »

Put away your dreams, everyone. It's over.

Last night's 10-3 Cubs loss to the Dodgers, which felt like the score was 100-3, was the most embarrassing postseason loss I have seen by any Cubs team, in fact possibly the most embarrassing postseason loss I've seen by ANY team.

Yes, I know. In fact, Manny Ramirez said it in the postgame press conference, which I listened to with little enthusiasm on the drive home: it takes three wins, not two, to win, and there have been seven five-game series in the history of MLB postseason play in which a team went down 2-0 and came back to win. They are:

• This 1981 "Division Series" between the Dodgers and Astros which was played because of the split season due to the strike. The format was 2-3 instead of 2-2-1 and the home team won all five games; the Dodgers shut out the Astros in game 5 to move on to the NLCS.
• The 1982 ALCS between the Angels and Brewers, played in the days when the LCS were five games. Again, a 2-3 split in which the home team won all five games.
• The 1984 NLCS. Nuff said.
• Moving on to the wild card era, this 1995 division series between the Yankees and Mariners. The split in '95 was still 2-3, and once again, the home team won all the games (the Yankees were the wild card).
• By 1999, the series was played in the format we now know: 2-2-1. The Red Sox came back and beat the Indians, losing the first two games at Cleveland, beating them 23-7 in game four at home and then winning game five on the road.
• The Yankees lost the first two games at home in their 2001 division series against the A's, took two games in Oakland including the famous play in game four in which Derek Jeter's relay cut down Jeremy Giambi, who was trying to score standing up.
• And, this 2003 ALDS between the A's and Red Sox; this time the Red Sox lost the first two games on the road before winning the series. Game Three, oddly enough, was started by Ted Lilly (for Oakland) and the losing pitcher was... Rich Harden.

I guess this means it can be done. But not by this team, not the way it's playing. Embarrassing doesn't even begin to describe the disastrous second inning last night in which Carlos Zambrano got not one, not two, but three ground balls, the last two of which could have ended the inning as routine double play balls, and none of them were fielded. The first one by James Loney -- that glanced off Ryan Theriot's hand for a base hit into left field -- that one I can understand, because Theriot appeared to be shifting to cover second base on a hit & run. It happens. Teams execute hit & runs all the time, and even to get to that ball was good effort on Theriot's part.

But the easy grounders booted by Mark DeRosa and Derrek Lee -- wow. I just can't understand those at all. You can't give a major league team five outs in an inning, especially in a playoff game. Z did the best he could to get out of the inning and his defense failed him, and when Russell Martin cleared the bases with a double, the crowd, which was jazzed up like a playoff crowd ought to be before the game, was silenced. All of us in our section sat there -- I can't even describe the feeling of being stunned that I felt throughout the game. It didn't help matters that by the 9th inning, the bullpen had helped tack four more runs onto the Dodgers' lead, including Neal Cotts allowing a single that scored the seventh (third earned) and final run on Z's record, so that when the Cubs got the remains of the sellout of 42,136 (maybe about half stuck it out to the end) noisy again with a two-run rally, it didn't matter -- maybe if it had been 6-1 instead of 10-1, the Cubs might have pulled off a miracle, but they had dug themselves far too deep a hole. Mike got me to laugh, finally, in the 9th inning when he said, "Maybe we've all been dead for 40 years and this is hell." (Was the fact that each infielder wound up with an error by the end of the game a macabre way of making each one feel better about himself? Or just another cruel joke?)

Yeah, that's what it felt like. Hell. (Although, maybe this movie describes it better.) The Cub offense looked like the 2006 version -- swinging and missing at bad pitches, or bouncing into groundouts. The only walk before the ninth inning was drawn by Z -- and then the second walk was drawn by Felix Pie, who had walked 21 times in his 266 major league plate appearances before last night. It's as if impostors showed up at Wrigley Field last night and put on the pinstripe pants and the blue shirts that Z favors. These guys couldn't be the ones who won 97 games during the regular season. What do you say about this? Management spent a ton of money and virtually every single move that Jim Hendry and Lou Piniella made during the season seemed the right ones, were hailed by most of us here, and almost every day new heroes were made, things Cubs fans hadn't seen in decades happened... and now this?

I received an email from BCB reader mjk83 this morning which read, in its entirety:

I will see you on Tuesday for Game 5.

Rich Harden and Ted Lilly will get this back to Chicago and Ryan Dempster will redeem himself.

..hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

And those of you who have read this site for a long time know that I am, in general, optimistic in nature, want to see the best of things, want to hope against hope (you know, if you are a "certain age", this is the way Jack Brickhouse always was on the air back in the hopeless early '60s, even when the Cubs were down several runs late in the game, always hoping they'd pull it out, even though they never did)... but this one's just about too much for me. I hope mjk83 is right. Really, I do. But that hope is much smaller this morning than it ought to be, and as I write this I'm 99% certain I'm cancelling my trip to Los Angeles... the game tickets I thought I had in hand fell through, and to go out there without tickets to see what feels like it's going to be a series sweep? Why bother?

I hope I'm wrong. If I am wrong and there's a game five on Tuesday, of course I'll be there. I know there are a ton of FanPosts today, far more than usual, and there may be some duplication in topics but at this point, I'm just going to let you guys vent. If this really is the end... yes, we're left with the wonderful memories of a great regular season, but it may be an extremely bitter taste from 2008 that will take a long time to wash away.

Let's hope that isn't the case. Go Cubs.

Here's the very first thing I want all of you to remember this morning, as fans: do NOT give in to the temptation to think, "Here we go again!"

There are two things that truly bothered me about the Cubs' truly awful 7-2 loss to the Dodgers last night.

First, it didn't feel like a playoff game -- not in the least. There wasn't the usual electricity you feel in the stands even before the game. Now, maybe you could chalk this up to the odd starting time, but that's not really an excuse; the park was filled at the first pitch, but there seemed no excitement, no buzz, no anticipation, no sense that this wasn't just another game on, say, May 1 instead of October 1. Even after Mark DeRosa's windblown homer that gave the Cubs a 2-0 lead, there wasn't the hiked-up level of excitement you'd expect. The scoreboard operators must have figured it was a regular-season game, too, because they kept adjusting everyone's batting average each at-bat as if their previous AB in the game had been just another regular-season AB. There also wasn't any real buzz on the street, although the city set up barricades on Waveland and Sheffield, expecting people to be sitting outside -- there weren't many more than the usual crowd on Waveland during the game. One guy spent several innings writing "GO CUBS GO" in huge letters in chalk on the street, but that was about it for anything unusual.

Second, this one's on Lou. Seriously -- if you have two pitchers (Sean Marshall and Jason Marquis) who are starters or pitchers used to going extended periods, on the roster for the specific purpose of using them in long relief, why wouldn't you use them that way on a night when it was clear that your starter had absolutely no command? This is something Lou did all year during the time when he had Jon Lieber in the bullpen -- refusing to use Lieber in the very long-relief situations that he was specifically on the roster to fill.

Ryan Dempster, who is a standup guy (and ditch the full beard, Ryan -- it looks awful), would probably be the first to tell you that he sucked last night. Part of the problem was home plate umpire Dale Scott's bizarre strike zone -- pitches that appeared right down the middle were called balls, while breaking stuff in the dirt got called as strikes -- which might have made Dempster try to adjust, getting him out of his normal rhythm and as the night went on, generating more and more pitches out of the zone (57 balls out of 109 pitches).

But Lou stuck with him. And as it turned out, probably two batters too long. After Dempster walked Manny Ramirez, his fifth free pass of the game, even though the Cubs still had a 2-0 lead at the time, Lou should have yanked him, especially with the lefthanded hitting Andre Ethier and James Loney coming up next. Marshall was ready to go and there were two out; we figured maybe Lou had fallen asleep in the cold. Even giving Lou the benefit of the doubt because of his decades of experience, once Ethier walked, loading the bases, Marshall should have been in there.

So this one's on you, Lou. You've done great things for this franchise -- but not last night. It didn't help that Marshall, Jeff Samardzija and Marquis all allowed single runs in their relief work; this turned a possibly workable 4-2 deficit into a 7-2 blowout, the exclamation point of which was Greg Maddux' appearance in the 9th inning. Maddux, the only Dodger who got cheers on pregame introduction (loud boos were reserved for LA's other ex-Cubs, Nomar Garciaparra and Juan Pierre), received only tepid applause when introduced to begin the 9th, possibly the last time Cub fans will see him pitch in Wrigley Field.

The other culprits are the highly-paid Alfonso Soriano and Aramis Ramirez, who vanished in last year's division series and who went a combined 1-for-9 last night. Frankly, I was surprised any balls went out of the yard last night with the wind blowing in the way it was; DeRosa's blast was actually blown out because the wind was sort of blowing across from center to right field; the other homers cut through the teeth of the wind, including Manny's... and that one's on Lou, too, because none of us could believe he left Marshall in to pitch to Manny, among the biggest mismatches I've ever seen in a playoff game. Incidentally, perhaps only funny moment last night was provided by Manny; he threw the warmup ball into the LF bleachers just below us going into the bottom of the 9th. It was promptly flung back on the field; Manny ducked (the ball wasn't really that close to him). If you're going to the game and thinking about doing this -- don't. The thrower was promptly ejected, because throwing anything but a HR ball back isn't allowed.

So. What have the Cubs lost here? Not the series -- there's still time, although it's at a premium in a short series. The Dodgers swiped home-field advantage, essentially; the Cubs can steal it back by winning the next two games. I note that the best team in baseball, the Angels, also lost their first game at home to the Red Sox. Carlos Zambrano -- you've got to be on your game tonight. No histrionics, no stomping around, no bat-breaking, just your best stuff, like you had on September 14 in Milwaukee.

Finally, a word about the game threads. I have heard from a few people telling me how nasty it got in there. I do understand frustration and wanting to "get it out". All I ask is that you keep the profanity down and most importantly, don't attack others.

This isn't 2003 or 2007 or any of the other years where the Cubs failed. Remember what all of us have been saying, almost all year? This feels different; this team is different. They've come back from crushing defeats before. There is a lot of baseball still to be played by the Chicago Cubs in 2008. Onward, because the best IS yet to come.

There have been, since the World Series began in 1903, 103 major league postseasons -- no, I haven't miscounted; there was no World Series in 1904, nor a postseason in 1994.

The Cubs and Dodgers, historic franchises, have participated in 35 of those between them. Between them they've been in 26 World Series (ten for the Cubs, 16 for the Dodgers; only the Cardinals, with 13, and the Dodgers, have won more NL pennants than the Cubs since 1900) and nine other postseasons in the divisional play era without making it to the Series (five for the Cubs, four for the Dodgers). But tomorrow marks the first time in the long history of both these teams that they will meet in a postseason game.

I thought, rather than do position by position matchups, which rarely mean anything (seriously: catchers don't do battle with each other on the field), I'd take a look back at the seven games these two teams played against each other during the regular season -- with the caveat that the Dodgers are a very different team now than they were then, having added Manny Ramirez and Casey Blake to their offense. The Cubs won the season series 5-2 by sweeping the Dodgers at home and splitting four games in Los Angeles.

May 26 at Wrigley Field -- Cubs 3, Dodgers 1:

Ryan Dempster [had his] 11th good start of the season. Yes, all 11 -- look at his previous game log and you'll see that although he had a couple of "not-great" starts, he hasn't been blown out of any of them, and has gone six or more innings in 10 of 11. Today, after getting out of a first-inning jam he caused himself by walking the nearly-unwalkable Juan Pierre by a nicely-executed rundown of Pierre trying to score (my friend and BCB reader bison texted me from California, where he had scored it from home 1-6-4-5-2-3-4), Dempster settled down and retired nine of the next ten hitters he faced, finally running into trouble in the fifth when Mark DeRosa couldn't handle an infield popup and had no play as Matt Kemp, who had doubled, scored LA's only run.

Dempster got himself out of another jam in the 6th, after he had loaded the bases with two singles and a walk to Kemp, and again in the 7th, when no one was warming up, a testament to how overworked the bullpen was in all the extra-inning games in Pittsburgh. Dempster threw 117 pitches, 71 for strikes, and Bob Howry had to do the same thing in the 8th. We couldn't figure out why Scott Eyre, warmed and ready, didn't come in to face two lefty hitters in James Loney and Delwyn Young. Lou explained during the news conference that he thought Howry was throwing better, and it appears he wanted to give Howry a confidence-builder.

That's a risky way to win games, but it worked. Howry struck out Loney and got Young to fly to Jim Edmonds (the ball, not too far away from Alfonso Soriano, had us yelling, "Let Edmonds take it!" (We were threatening to ask the Cubs to put those beeping sounds you hear from trucks backing up near the wall so Alfonso would know when he's getting close to it, either that or yellow crime-scene tape.)

Dempster, for his part, continued pitching well all year -- he only had one or two bad starts the entire season.

May 28 at Wrigley Field -- Cubs 3, Dodgers 1:

[Kosuke] Fukudome, who has been in an offensive funk, snapped out of it with the double, a single and a walk, and made a couple of sparkling defensive plays in right field. How anyone could consider hurting the defense by moving him to CF and putting a minor league first baseman in right, I simply cannot understand. It does appear, as I keep saying, that Jim Edmonds is done, done, D-O-N-E (have I said done?). He went 0-for-4 last night, got booed roundly the last two times, and his bat speed is probably about the same as Cubs hitting coach Gerald Perry's would be if Perry took the field now. Edmonds did make one nice catch going back on a fly ball to the warning track; his fielding is still decent and he catches everything he gets to. I still fail to see how this team is helped by his presence.

Last night's performance by Kerry Wood ought to quiet a similar chorus asking for him to be replaced at closer. He looked dominant and seems to be getting more comfortable in the role each time out. Meanwhile, Carlos Marmol had a shaky outing, loading the bases before getting out of the jam. I'd like to see him rest up some, as he's bordering on severe overwork.

Well, obviously, I was wrong about Edmonds that day in May -- he started hitting right after that and has been an exemplary presence on the field and in the clubhouse. His postseason experience -- he has more than anyone else on the club, even Alfonso Soriano -- will be invaluable in October.

May 29 at Wrigley Field -- Cubs 2, Dodgers 1:

Before a near-sellout of 39,945 on a night that was, by the end, starting to get cold, the Cubs provided 9th and 10th inning dramatics that had Wrigley Field rocking as I have never heard it for a regular season game this early in the year, and Alfonso Soriano shut up his critics (for a day, at least) by poking a single into left field, scoring Mike Fontenot with the winning run in an excruciatingly exciting 2-1 Cubs win over the Dodgers, completing the Cubs' fourth three-game sweep at home this season, moving their home record to a spectacular 22-8, pushing them 11 games over .500 for the first time since the last day of the ill-fated 2004 season...

Remind me again why the Cubs need another starting pitcher? They allowed an admittedly hurting LA "offense" three runs in this series, and the only one Carlos Zambrano allowed last night was on a bases-loaded walk after he had helped load the bases by hitting Matt Kemp. Z admitted in his postgame comments that he knew he didn't have his best stuff or command; he walked four, tying his season high, and had to get, essentially, five outs in that tense eighth inning because his defense deserted him (Mark DeRosa let a ball go off his glove which was ruled a hit, and Ryan Theriot made a throwing error, both of which could have been outs). Z threw an alarmingly high total of 130 pitches -- something we haven't seen since the Baker era. However, Lou said in his own postgame remarks that he'll keep Z on a short leash in his next start...

It was right after that when Z's shoulder started to bark at him and a little over two weeks later, he had to be taken out of a game at Tampa Bay and wound up on the DL. I think Z is fine now, but the staff will have to watch his pitch count closely. (Yet another reason Bob Howry shouldn't be on the playoff roster.)

Kerry Wood, who some here were ready to throw under the bus when he had a tough debut as closer on Opening Day, is now leading the National League in saves.

Once again, this team won with a different hero; last night it was Kosuke Fukudome, who hit his first MLB home run away from Wrigley Field and who drove in the winning run with e perfectly-placed single off his countryman Takashi Saito in the 9th inning.

The Cubs blew an early 4-0 lead when Jeff Kent homered twice, once off Ryan Dempster, once off Bob Howry, who nearly did a Ted Lilly slam-the-glove-down move, rare for him -- you almost never see Howry show emotion on the mound -- but this resilient team came back. Props to Neal Cotts for throwing a scoreless inning -- so far, since his recall, Cotts looks more like the setup man who had a 1.94 ERA for the 2005 champion White Sox, than the guy who got sent down seemingly never to return last year.

Kent won't be playing in this series (and we hope, neither will Howry), and it would be great if Fukudome could get out of his two-month offensive funk and contribute in this series.

June 6 at Dodger Stadium -- Dodgers 3, Cubs 0:

... they just got beat last night when they got shut down by a pretty good pitcher. That kind of stuff happens even to great teams (example: the 114-win 1998 Yankees got shut out five times, including by scores of 7-0, 9-0 and 11-0. This makes three for the 2008 Cubs). [Hiroki] Kuroda not only held the Cubs to four harmless singles, he also struck out eleven and didn't walk anyone.

I posted a long diatribe about Ryan Theriot's lack of range in that recap; obviously, we're long past the time when any change is going to be made (especially with Ronny Cedeno now with a balky shoulder because of the dumb dive he made into 1B in NY last week). Theriot's the SS, for good or bad, for the duration. We can only hope that Kuroda's more hittable in game three than he was that night in June.

Carlos Zambrano actually threw six good innings; unfortunately, his defense deserted him in the seventh, with Aramis Ramirez charged with one error and Kosuke Fukudome dropping a catchable fly ball (the latter would have ended the seventh inning with the score only 4-3 Dodgers). You simply can't give a major league team five outs in any inning and expect to win.

All of this was after the Cubs had fashioned leads of 2-0 and 3-2 against the tough Derek Lowe, and even though Z had given up a ton of hits, he had gotten out of every jam up to the point where Russell Martin homered to tie the game at 2. In fact, all three homers hit today -- Martin's, Alfonso Soriano's, and the killer three-run blast from Matt Kemp that put the game away -- didn't seem as if they were going to go out when they first left the bat. All seemed routine fly balls that wound up carrying; Dodger Stadium seems more conducive to that during the day than at night.

And those defensive lapses were the story of the game; otherwise Z and Lowe matched up pretty well, and once the game was out of hand, Neal Cotts threw an inning and a third without allowing anything else, saving the rest of the bullpen for tomorrow.

So -- the Cubs could have defeated Derek Lowe (who is 2-1, 3.25 in eight career starts vs. the Cubs) if they'd have played a more solid defensive game, and note that the Dodger homers were hit during a day game, when the ball carries better than at night; all the games in the division series are likely to be night games (the first three definitely are).

Apart from Geovany Soto's throwing error on Juan Pierre's first-inning steal, which allowed Pierre to go to third and score on an infield out, the Cubs were nearly flawless in front of the national audience. Jason Marquis -- see, I knew he had this kind of talent, as Mark DeRosa said:

"I think sometimes he becomes his own worst enemy," DeRosa said. "He sometimes doesn't realize how great his stuff is. When he's on, he's tough to hit. He has a good sinker, he had good command of his slider and his split. He's a good pitcher. He's been a good pitcher in this league."

Exactly. Marquis threw strikes last night and had terrific movement on his pitches. If he hadn't run into trouble in the 7th inning, Lou might have let him finish, as he had thrown only 89 pitches when he was removed, but taking him out in favor of Carlos Marmol was the right thing to do.

Marquis probably won't pitch -- much -- in this series, but it's nice to know that he has this terrific outing, one of his best of the year, to think about if he winds up going against the Dodgers. LA, in fact, is one of his favorite opponents; in 9 career appearances against them (8 starts) he's 3-1, 1.99 in 54.1 innings.

So there you have it. For the Dodger fan's point of view please check out our SBN Dodgers site True Blue LA, and I also wanted to give a shout-out to my friend Rob McMillin's site that covers both the Dodgers and Angels, 6-4-2. (And Rob's wife Helen is a Cubs fan and occasional BCB poster.) In case you haven't already looked up my 2008 preseason predictions, there's the link; usually it's pretty embarrassing, but only half so this year. I nailed the NL playoff teams, all four of them. (Not so much for the AL, but at least I'm in good company; hardly anyone would have picked the Rays, White Sox or Twins back in March). I'll stand by my NL predictions for the postseason, too: the Cubs to win this series 3-1, and the Brewers over the Phillies, setting up what ought to be a terrific NLCS.

MILWAUKEE -- There comes a time in virtually every season put together by a championship team to which you can look back and say, "That was the play -- or the game -- or the series -- where it all came together."

It is, of course, far too early -- there remain two months in the regular season, and we hope, a month of postseason play -- but if the Chicago Cubs do indeed do what they seem capable of, what we have hoped and dreamed for all our collective lives, it seems clear that this four-game sweep of the Brewers in Milwaukee is that moment.

Just five days ago, after the dispiriting 3-2 loss in 12 innings to the Marlins on Saturday, at which time the Cubs found themselves barely hanging on to first place and having gone 3-6 since the All-Star break, that many here were ledge-jumping and worrying and panicking... but the players never did. The turnaround started with the win over Florida on Sunday, and continued through this dominant rampage through Miller Park, where the Cubs outscored the Brewers 31-10 (and it really could have been 31-7, a football-type score; the last three runs were a sloppy gift from Scott Eyre, who hadn't pitched since being activated eight days ago) and, apart from the close game on Monday, were never challenged.

The heroes of today's 11-4 Cubs win over Milwaukee included Jim Edmonds, who homered twice including a grand slam, which got a rousing standing ovation -- and Edmonds was given another standing O from the more-than-half-Cubs-fans crowd when he came up to bat in the seventh inning. The grand slam was particularly rewarding because it happened after the first two batters in that fourth inning were retired easily by Dave Bush; a two-out walk drawn by Aramis Ramirez started the rally, continued with a Kosuke Fukudome double and then Mark DeRosa being hit by an 0-2 pitch from Bush.

After that it was Rich Harden, relaxed and dominant, blazing through the Brewers lineup like they were minor leaguers. Just one mistake -- a HR pitch to Prince Fielder, no shame there, since that guy can hit -- was the only thing marring Harden's outstanding effort, and one of the keys to his success today was the total in the "BB" column. ZERO. He threw 71 strikes in his 105 pitches and it seemed effortless.

After leaving 15 men on base Wednesday night -- and I'm certainly not complaining, because there were baserunners galore then and seven of them scored -- the Cubs didn't leave a runner on base until the ninth inning today, when Mike Fontenot drove in the final two runs with a single and then was stranded. All the runs prior to the 9th inning had scored as a result of homers; Alfonso Soriano, hot right now just as he was the last time he came off the DL in May, hit his 18th, and Fukudome slammed a rocket to right for his 8th. It seems, after a long funk perhaps partly due to the calf injury he suffered in June, that Dome is back on track; he also doubled today and his average has poked back above the .280 mark.

What a special, wonderful season this has been so far. By the end of the game virtually all the Brewers fans had departed, so the remaining part of the 45,346 -- Milwaukee's 11th straight sellout, pushing them past 2 million on their 55th home date -- were Cubs fans, and we all gave the club a roaring sendoff after Sean Marshall struck out Rickie Weeks to end the game, after Eyre couldn't keep the Brewers down. Lou didn't seem very pleased to have to come out and yank Eyre; since it's past the trading deadline Eyre's probably staying a Cub, at least for now.

About the ejections of Eric Gagné and Prince Fielder in the 9th -- well, frankly, I think Doug Eddings isn't a very good umpire. If Gagné had wanted to throw a purpose pitch at Edmonds, why did he wait till the count was 3-0? I think Gagné just didn't have any command today. Still, perhaps the ejection was justified; Eddings did warn both benches after that, in an effort to prevent future bad blood between the teams. The ejection of Fielder may have been more justified -- after flying to left, Fielder came back and jawed at Eddings repeatedly, continuing after Eddings had tossed him. A fine is likely to be in Fielder's future. You can understand the frustration of the Brewers, I suppose, after getting swept in their own park where they had been 32-19 before this series. Meanwhile, the Cubs improved their road record to 26-30, better than it was -- and remember, there are only four teams in MLB with winning road records this year (Yankees, Angels, Phillies and Cardinals).

While this series was a huge statement, remember that 53 games remain in the season and that's a long time, and the Brewers are a good team and aren't going anywhere -- if the Cubs do win the NL Central, it's a pretty good bet that the Brewers will be the wild card team, setting up a possible matchup in the NLCS. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, because there is much baseball left, including a tough road schedule for the Cubs in September (after September 3, they will play 16 of their final 22 on the road, although three of them will be in Miller Park, where they just swept, and three others in St. Louis, where they have played well this year).

So, onward to August and early September, where between tomorrow and Sept. 3, 22 of the next 31 Cubs games will be at Wrigley Field, where the Cubs have dominated this year. That'll have to continue, and the Cubs will be facing the Pirates minus Jason Bay, who was traded to Boston in the three-way deal between the Red Sox, Dodgers and Pirates that sent Manny Ramirez to LA. Make no mistake, the Pirates got some good young players, including Brandon Moss and Craig Hansen from the Red Sox, and uniting Andy LaRoche, acquired from LA, with his brother Adam, the Pirates' first baseman.

Bring 'em on. Till tomorrow. What a week, what a year. Each day, remember where you were, what you were doing, who you were with, when you remember each of these wins... because if the Cubs do reach the Promised Land, you will want to remember these moments forever.