Marlon Byrd

We said yesterday that the demotion to AAA seems to have helped Marlon Byrd's swing. That got us to thinking about his stats. Since coming back from AAA, Byrd has had an impressive run:

AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
.407	.429	.704	1.133

Yes, he's had only 27 at bats so it's a small sample size, but this is a Marlon Byrd we haven't seen before.

Byrd's production isn't merely an abstract issue. If Byrd can be a consistently productive hitter over the remaining games, he will give the Nationals' playoff chances a serious boost because they will have one fewer position at which they get less than replacement player production. With Nick Johnson out for a few games and Jose Vidro out longer than that, the Nats can't afford to be getting poor production from so many positions.