Bartender Banter: Pulling Up Lame

Well that sucked.

It was a rough weekend series, between the shoddy defense, to the miserable bullpen work, to having to endure McCarver/Buck one day and Joe Morgan the next. Last night's game could be the one that we look back on later as the turning point for the Cubs season if they falter down the stretch. Soriano pulling up lame on his way to third base drew gasps from the crowd, and you could just sense the total deflation happening inside Wrigley. Turns out, Soriano will likely be out for a month, which leaves us with a gaping hole in left field as well as the lead off spot.

Then there was the pitching. How much more of this will we have to endure? Will Ohman has been absolutely atrocious as of late, and Scott Eyre and Ryan Dempster haven't been much better. At least Kerry Wood's one inning of work sparked some enthusiasm back into the crowd, and just for a little while, we could witness what a good relief pitcher can look like.

By the way, seeing Joe Morgan and Jon Miller in HD = Yikes!

So now they hit the road starting with tonight's game in Houston. One would assume that with Soriano out, Ryan Theriot will get first shake at the leadoff spot. Of course I'm pulling for Thunder Matt to see time at left field and with lefty Wandy Rodriguez starting tonight, I think he'll probably get the start, with possibly Pagan in CF and Floyd in RF. Of course with Soriano hitting the DL, that would most likely bring Felix Pie back for another run.

I'm not ready to hit the panic button yet though. We still have two months to go, and there's still some good talent on this team. Let's just see if this series against Houston will get things back on track.

Football? What's a Football?
It's about that time again. As the NFL season is about a month away, you can expect to see some football coverage to begin real soon at the Saloon. We plan on bringing you our own NFL preview, and perhaps a return of the TMS Tecmo Super Simulator 2000 later on. Also for you fantasy geeks out there. Be sure and check our football rankings, which I hope to have updated later this week.

Fantasy Hurricane League Update
Well so far things have been pretty quiet in the 2007 TMS Fantasy Hurricane League. Here's a quick recap of what's transpired.

Subtropical Storm Andrea, May 9 to May 11 - My fourth round pick. It never quite made landfall and was pretty much a bust. Score = 5 points.

Tropical Storm Barry, June 1 to June 2 - The number one overall pick never gained much strength, but made solid landfall in the states. Score = 55 points.

Tropical Storm Chantal, July 31 to August 1 - Brant's second round pick only affected Newfoundland, but since Canada isn't in our scoring table, this storm proved to be inconsequential. Score = 5 points.

So after three storms here is the current standings.

1. Brant Brown - 60 points
2. Chip Wesley - 5 points
3. Chaim Witz - 0 points
4. Chi-Town Girl - 0 points
5. Governor Gray Davis - 0 points

TMS Radio, Take 2
I was playing around with things on MediaMaster today and noticed they've made a few changes to how the radio stations work. The biggest improvement being that now when you listen to the radio station on your media player (Winamp, iTunes), it will display the name of the song and the artist. It didn't have that before so if you weren't familiar with a song, you had no idea what it was or who it was from. I may play around with this once again in the coming weeks. The embedded media player will not be coming back though as it severely bogged the site down.