Guzman Back on Field, but on Track?

JUPITER, Fla., March 14 -- The sight is enough to give hard-core fans of the Washington Nationals night sweats, because as many happy memories as there were during the summer of 2005 -- when baseball returned to Washington and begat a team that sat in first place at the all-star break -- Cristian Guzman brought nary a smile. Men who enter September hitting .196 elicit boos, not cheers.

But there was Guzman on Wednesday afternoon, standing at shortstop for the first time in more than a year. A year ago Thursday, Guzman boarded a plane for Cincinnati, sent by the Nationals to get a second opinion on what was thought to be a balky right shoulder. Turned out he had a torn labrum, and his 2006 season was lost before it started.

With that as a backdrop -- poor performance followed by no performance -- the rebuilding of Guzman began in earnest Wednesday. He played five innings at shortstop in the Nationals' 2-2 tie with the St. Louis Cardinals, his first appearance in the field in a Grapefruit League game this spring. The process of putting behind the inconsistency and the injury came on a day when he went 1 for 3 with a single and another well-hit ball, a day when he fielded the only two balls hit to him without problem.

But how he handled it all remains a bit of a mystery. After he was replaced in the sixth inning, Guzman showered, packed his bag and headed for the comfort of the team bus. He refused a team spokesman's request to address his performance, his condition or his expectations.

"I feel good," Guzman said before the game. "I haven't had any problems with it, and I have no pain."

Wednesday was important because Guzman, who is owed $8.4 million over the next two seasons, will help determine how the Nationals' new infield defense and overhauled top of the order will fare this season. With Guzman back and Alfonso Soriano lost to free agency, Felipe Lopez moves from shortstop to second base and from the second spot in the order into the leadoff job. That puts Guzman, with a ghastly career on-base percentage of .298 and coming off a 2005 in which he hit .219, in the second spot, where he has appeared in 460 major league games -- more than twice as many as he has played in any other spot in the order.

"Historically, he's not a high on-base percentage guy," Manager Manny Acta said. "We've been talking to him. We're going to sit down and talk again. . . . There's always room for improvement, and he should be able to improve his on-base percentage. But I'm just looking at him not being the .220 guy that he was here. I want him to get back to .265, .270, .280 batting average, which will improve his on-base percentage, obviously."

Whether that can happen is a work in progress. Guzman now has 15 spring training plate appearances, and has but three hits and one walk. General Manager Jim Bowden said the team is pleased with how Guzman is swinging the bat. That, however, doesn't provide any guarantees.

"I don't think any of us can predict what he is going to do," Bowden said. "We know the last two years he was hurt. We know he was a good player with the Minnesota Twins, and we can only hope that he can regain that form. But there's nobody that says when you've had a poor year and then missed an entire year with injury, there's no one that can predict what he'll do this year. And the fact that he hasn't played a lot of shortstop down here does not allow us to have a judgment."

Acta, who watched Guzman's struggles from afar as the third base coach with the New York Mets in 2005, has said all spring that he has been impressed with what he considers Guzman's upbeat attitude.

"Anybody, I guess, who was playing the way he was playing two years ago can't have any fun," Acta said. "I guess he's having fun again."

On Wednesday, Guzman was forced to have fun without Lopez, his new double play partner. The club said Lopez got caught in traffic coming from his home in Orlando and missed the team bus.

But Acta is eager to have the two new middle infielders play together. He moved their lockers next to each other in the clubhouse and has paired them in all infield drills, even when Guzman couldn't throw.

That process, then, will continue over the weekend. Guzman will serve as a designated hitter in a split-squad game Thursday, then play seven innings Friday. If all goes well, he'll make regular appearances after that, all with the objective of proving his career as a National won't continue to make stomachs roil.

"I think the next two weeks will tell us more," Bowden said. "I don't think we have enough information."