BCB After Dark: The most valuable Cub, so far

Welcome back to BCB After Dark: The members-only club for night owls, early-risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. You’re in luck. It’s open mic night tonight. Put your name on the sign-up sheet on the table. We’ll call you when it’s your turn.

BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.

Tonight was the definition of a pyrrhic victory, as the Cubs downed the Pirates 4-3 but lost Nico Hoerner to a hamstring strain. I guess we’ll know more in the morning about how much time Hoerner is going to miss, but there seems little doubt he’s going to miss some time. It seems Sergio Alcantara is on his way to Wrigley. And he’s in for a surprise because the Cubs are in Pittsburgh. But I’m sure he can catch a flight from Chicago to Pittsburgh before Wednesday’s game.

(No, I don’t really think Alcantara is going to Chicago by mistake. I wrote that by mistake in my first draft, realized it immediately and instead of changing it, decided to just roll with it.)

The other good news is that the Cardinals lost again to the White Sox and the Cubs are just half a game behind St. Louis for first place in the NL Central.

Last time I asked you if you thought the Cubs would be buyers or sellers at the trade deadline. Yes, I know it’s too early to really know where the Cubs are going to be in the standings in July, but you come up with three good baseball-related poll questions a week that will drum up some interest. No, seriously. If you’ve got a good baseball poll question I can ask, put it in the comments. Or email me or contact me on Twitter.

Anyway, the question generated a lot of good discussion and “They’ll do nothing or make just add and subtract a few players” won the vote with 54%. Another 29% of you said they’ll be selling and 16% thought the Cubs would add significant pieces at the deadline.

Tuesdays are a busy day for me, so I don’t normally write about jazz and movies on the Tuesday night/Wednesday morning edition. But I do normally at least give you a song to listen to and I’m going to combine jazz and movies with the Duke Ellington classic “Take the A Train,” [VIDEO] written by Billy Strayhorn and performed on the movie “Reveille with Beverly.” I haven’t sen the movie, but now I want to after watching this clip.

The Cubs now stand at 25-22. They’ve played 47 games and unless there is a postponement between now and then, they’ll play game 50 on Friday against the Reds.

So we’re almost a third of the way through the season already. And after a crummy start, the Cubs are doing better than probably a lot of you expected. So I’m going to ask you who you think the Cubs’ MVP is for the first third of the season.

I don’t care how you define “valuable,” in MVP. But if we had a vote at the end of the season picking the Cubs Most Valuable Player, I want you to tell me who you think is leading the field at the moment. The candidates are everyone listed on baseball-reference as having a WAR of more than 1.0 as of the end of Sunday night’s game. Plus Matt Duffy, who has been the best of the rest. But you can pick anyone and leave your candidate in the comments if I didn’t list him.

Thanks for stopping by. We’ll see you again late tomorrow night/early Thursday morning.