One Cub got royally snubbed

The Cubs pounded the Cardinals over the weekend and it was quite a week for St. Louis. They played six games, they lost five, scored in two and if not for Brad Keller crapping all over himself on Saturday they'd have been more humiliated than normal.

As it was, they were outscored by 30 runs last week. 30! (41-11).

The Sunday Night broadcast was typically vapid. Karl Ravech's toupee and Muppet voiced Eduardo Perez were up to their normal boring nonsense, and the presence of David Cone made Cubs' Carjacker Reese McGuire only the second most famous masturbator in the building.

As the Cardinals were being bludgeoned for the fifth time in a week they kept talking about what a surprise the Cardinals' alleged playoff contention is. Granted they are a half game out of the final wild card spot (though in fifth place in those standings) but they don't score runs, they can only pitch when it's Sonny Gray's turn and they are just 21-28 against winning teams.

They are, in short...bad.

The best part of Sunday Night's game was Cardinals shortstop Masyn Winn was mic'd up for the fifth inning while the Cubs scored five times to go up 8-0. We got to listen to him sigh his way through it. Masyn seems like a good dude. It'll be fun to root for him in two years when he leaves the Cardinals.

The All-Star non-starters and pitchers were announced before the game and there was, as always, the talk of all the snubs. It's never enough to talk about the guys who are going to the game, you have to spend most of your time bitching about who isn't.

And I get it, there were guys who were snubbed. Guys who are clearly having All-Star seasons but either because they play a position with a lot of really good players, or they play one where the only decent Colorado Rockie plays, they didn't make it.

Three Cubs are going. Petecrow Armstrong and Kyle Tucker were both voted in by the fans, and the players (they were the top two vote getters in the outfield by both constituencies, which is cool) and they knew last week that they were going. There's almost zero chance that Petecrow won't be mic'd up and have Joe Davis (I CANNOT CONTROL THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE) yelling at him and John Smoltz grumbling about not being able to play golf during the game.

But how many other Cubs would join them? The most obvious candidates were Seiya Suzuki, Matthew Boyd, Carson Kelly and the hard charging Michael Busch (especially if the AL promised not to bring in a lefty to pitch to him.)

Boyd did make the team. And it's well deserved. He came into Sunday night's game 8-3 with a 2.65 ERA and allowing just 85 hits in 98.2 innings. Considering injuries have limited him to just over 120 innings total the last three years, the question with Boyd was more how much was he going to be able to pitch, not how well. It's very cool that at 34 he's making his first All-Star appearance.

Kelly's overall stats are All-Star worthy for a catcher. He's hitting .268/.370/.508. And they don't divvy your numbers up like this, but if it doesn't feel like Carson's having an All-Star season anymore it's because he was pretty bad at the plate in May and June, slashing just .217/.288/.308.

But like Busch, he's sprinting to the tape. In his four July games he's hitting .385/.471/.1.077 with as many homers (two) and RBI (five) as he had in May and June combined.

Kelly's best chance of making the All-Star team is for Rockies catcher Hunter Goodman to take one off the nuts this week. Hey, it could happen.

Busch has been great of late, but as late as June 14 he was just kind of OK, hitting .260 with 11 homers. With most of the vote in, he went nuts hitting .431/.463/.863 with seven homers and 17 RBI in just his last 14 games.

Given all that, only one Cub was truly snubbed.