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.

Astonishing! Or is it?

Prowling the Internet this A.M., I came across Federal Baseball's report of Bill Ladson's original MLB.com article on the right-field situation for the Nationals.

My first thought, based on reading headlines, was 'How can you be so fickle as to abandon your plan after one game?' Looking at Ladson's article, and doing a bit of NatsTownology™,* I'm in a slightly less censorious mood. It is not at all apparent that the Taveras/Harris platoon is going to be abandoned, although that might happen. The reality is that with Jason Marquis on the mound, and his groundball tendencies (49.8/31.7 GB/FB per cent on career), outfield defence is not as critical as it might otherwise be.†

(Nevertheless, I reserve the right to be disagreeably abusive if they have dispensed with the announced plan after only one game.)
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* The twenty-first century's replacement for Kremlinology.
† But once the bullpen comes in to protect a lead, please, please put a glove man out there.