Is Emilio Bonifacio for real?

by craig on Apr 15, 2009 4:01 PM EDT in News and Rumors

For this one I will give the hat tip to Marlins Die-Hards. I actually found this on my own but Ted posted it first so why not.

Ken Rosenthal had this to say about Bonifacio.

Hate to be a spoilsport about a player as exciting as Marlins third baseman Emilio Bonifacio, but ...

While Bonifacio is 16-for-33 after seven games, at least one scout is far from convinced that he is a keeper.

"He can fly, but once teams figure him out, he's going to hit .240," the scout says. "And his glove is terrible. He's a 40-error guy at third base.

"I think he's afraid of the ball, personally. If he gets buzzed and pitchers start throwing a lot of breaking balls to him, he's in big trouble.

"He's just a guy."

There is no way on the face of this planet he will continue to hit .485/.500/.667. Just notta gonna happen. But the man is on a streak so keep swinging.

I have many doubts about Bonifacio, but hopefully I will be proved wrong. Personally if he hits around .250 with on base percentage of around .330 when the season is done, I will be very impressed.

As for the glove work, he is learning a new position and that takes some time to make the adjustment. Moving from being a middle infielder to playing one of the corners causes some discomfort and anxiety . If you have never done it, when you start playing on the corners it looks like the batter is about three feet away and if he pulls a pitch he could kill you.

The glove could come around but the hitting will fall off, but how far the hitting falls off will be very interesting to watch. However, the man is on fire for now, so enjoy it.

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I’d be impressed if Bonifacio hit .250 with a .330 OBP as well… though mostly because he hasn’t really shown a talent for drawing walks. Not that I couldn’t see that coming in time; if there’s one thing the Marlins have been very good at, it’s been teaching their hitters to be more patient. (Look at Hanley or Uggla.) Still, an .080 difference between BA and OBP is probably a couple years off at best.

But I think .250 is a bit low as well. I feel like Bonifacio could bunt .250… did you see that hit he got in the 8th last night? That was a routine ground ball to the shortstop — the shortstop moved to the middle, no less. And he couldn’t even catch him. The Braves were pitching him high all night — he chased a couple, but he also fought some off. So he saw this alleged killer strategy, and he countered it. Teams aren’t going to get any MORE strategic.

And I’m not going back to the tape from the WAS series, but if high pitches were allegedly this huge career-killing vulnerability for Boni, wouldn’t his former team know that? And wouldn’t they try to exploit it? So either they failed to implement a strategy their coaching staff must have known about, or else it’s not such a foolproof strategy after all.

I feel like he’s going to be just fine. If I had to guess, I’d go with something like .280 BA/.340 OPS for the season… I’m willing to predict a few more walks for him than last year, because the Marlins usually do pretty well at teaching patience, plus if the preferred strategy involves pitching him high, that implies that he’s going to be seeing more balls.

by 3.3seconds on Apr 15, 2009 5:52 PM EDT reply actions