Bartender Banter: Quick notes from the Saloon

It was a relatively quiet weekend in the Saloon as most of us were out enjoying the holiday. Chaim's saturday post regarding Neifi pretty much summed up everyone's feelings and frustrations towards His Pudginess. Now we've got Tony Womack, so we can hope for someone to play 2B while Walker covers 1B, that perhaps can bat .240 as opposed to Neifi's .204.

Coming up this week...
I'm working on a longer piece that will be up later this week. And perhaps we'll get another edition of Realm of Red from Chaim or another glowing review of the Dodgers from our good friend the Governor. Also now that BrantBrown is finished up with classes for the summer, you can expect a bit more from him as well.

Mad Dog feels right at home
Greg Maddux went from April stud (5-0, 1.35 ERA) to May dud (0-4, 7.81 ERA), hitting rock bottom in South Florida when he did his best rendition of "The Untouchables" with a water cooler. Today, Greg closes the month out at home against Cincinnati. There's reason to be optimistic here. In 4 starts at Wrigley, he currently holds a 1.40 ERA and a 3-0 record. His only other home start in May so far resulted in a no-decision against the Padres, where he allowed only 4 hits and 1 run in 7.1 IP.

Thunder Matt on a tear
There hadn't been much to talk about related to Murton lately but over the last week, Thunder Matt's bat has been as red hot as that scraggly mop on his head. In the last 7 days, Murton has hit 8 for 16 with 2 home runs. Murton, like Maddux, seems to thrive at home. Currently he is batting .361 with an OPS of .918 at the Friendly Confines.

Getting linked up
About three weeks ago I registered the Saloon with Statcounter.com, that way I could see how many hits we were actually getting and where they were coming from. Less than a month in, I have to say there are a few things I've learned.

• 1) We have people not only reading our stuff, but they've actually come back on a separate occasion to read some more.
• 2) People do Google searches from some really weird shit.

Some of my favorite keyword searches done that people found us through include "hobo fights", "Kyle Farnsworth gay", "Tim McCarver worst announcer", "Pierzynski clubhouse cancer", and "cock tattoo". Some of them make sense, but who the hell is Googling "hobo fights" and "cock tattoo"? Actually I don't want to know. Some things are better left unanswered.

We actually got linked by someone else! While I've submitted the Saloon to be added to the Cubs Blog Army (which may or may not ever get done by the looks of it), someone has given us some props and added a link to our site. Thanks to Andy Bugay for the publicity. Andy currently sponsor's Thunder Matt Murton's Baseball Reference page. He also has a pretty funny piece about the "13 Worst Cubs Injuries" in the Dusty Era.