Astonishing! Yes, It Is!

When Cristian Guzmán took over from Mike Morse in rightfield last night, I was astonished. Yes I was. Weren't we told Guzmán's arm wasn't up to playing at shortstop? It is actions like this that give sober men pause. Now it seems that according to an Adam Kilgore 'tweet', Desmond-of-the-two-errors is going to make way for Guzmán from time to time.

You could look at Fangraphs win probability chart and see that Josh Willingham was our batting star of the game. Or you could look at my own spreadsheet, with my own version of leveraged win value (which cumulatively appears in the sidebar), and see that Josh Willingham was the batting star of the game. This gives me confidence in my own system.

Finally, I'll just comment that despite Federal Baseball's headline, Marquis' outing was actually worse, by my measure, than Lannan's.

Dinger Danger?

Hurrah! The first broadcasts of 2010 Nationals' games are made today. Even better, there's a choice of two games. At least that's what the MLB media centre tells me, as I find both the Marlins and Astros are listed as giving play-by-play of today's split squad games.

While you are waiting, here's a fun tool to play around with. It allows you to superimpose on any currently in-use ballpark of your choice the balls-in-play hit by a player or given up by a pitcher in a different 2009 ballpark. It's based on mlb.com's HitTracker, I think.

I've translated Jason Marquis from Coors Field to Nationals Park. I've limited my selection to extra-base hits and fly balls. Looks like he might give up a few more home runs.

Hat-tip to Tangotiger at The Book Blog.