On the day the other guys in town got a deal done with their ace pitcher, Cubs ace Carlos Zambrano made another pitch for what now looks even more like it could become the biggest payday for a pitcher in baseball history. Actually, he made 122 pitches, not all of them great, but he showed enough resiliency and ingenuity Sunday to keep his price -- if not his win total -- climbing as he rolls toward free agency. Zambrano lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates 6-2 but pitched well enough for seven innings to stay on his torrid monthlong pace and, more important, to apply another seven innings of weight to the pressure Mark Buehrle's four-year extension with the White Sox just put on the Cubs. The Cubs' negotiations with Zambrano were much simpler than the Sox' with their ace, with general manager Jim Hendry striking a near-deal with Big Z just before the season opener -- until the sale of the team's parent company stopped all multiyear spending projects in their tracks, including the Zambrano deal. That four-year extension, believed to be worth about $72 million, looked like a bargain at the time and has looked even smaller with almost every start he has made over the last month.