From Last Night:

• Matt Joyce walks-off in an 8-7 win over the Orioles
• Joey Votto, not to be outdone, hits a walk-off single not ten minutes later in a 5-4 win over the Halos
• Ervin Santana allows 3 HR in his Royals debut, loses to the White Sox
• Matt Harvey tosses 7 1-hit innings and fans 10 Padres in an 8-4 win
• Halladay strikes out 9, walks 3, and allows 5 runs in 3 1/3 innings in a loss to the Braves

What I’m Watching Today:

• Cliff Lee and Kris Medlen face off in Atlanta in the only premier pitching matchup of the day (7p Eastern)

The Big Question:

• Which #3/4 starters will give their teams a boost in the first week?

The early season is a great time for hilarious quirks of small sample sizes. Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that yesterday I was abuzz about Yu Darvish’s -0.27 FIP. In other words, FIP thinks his strikeout rate, walk rate, homerun rate, and IFFB rate should yield outcomes that literally take runs away from the opposing team. That is quite impressive. Another sample size issue I’m tracking is which player is the first past 1.0 WAR. As I write this, Darvish’s 0.6 is the closest, but on average we wouldn’t expect to see it happen until we were about 10-20 games into the season. I think my money will be on Harper. Much of what happened last night can be encapsulated in the lines above, but yesterday was the first day in which all 30 teams were in action and the benefits of that were reaped by those of us watching around 10pm. I really missed watching MLB Network go back and forth as so many games went down to the wire. Man, baseball is great and I’m never sleeping again.