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Bonifacio’s Career with the Fish, What Can We Expect This Season

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Let’s talk about Emilio Bonifacio’s career with the Marlins and what we can expect from him this year.

The Marlins traded outfielder Josh “The Hammer” Willingham and LHP Scott Olsen to the Washington Nationals for Emilio Bonifacio, Jake Smolinski, and P.J. Dean.

Bonifacio is known for being a fast runner. On April 6, 2009, his first game as a Marlin, he made history. He hit a home run, but not just an ordinary HR. It was an inside-the-park home run on Opening Day against his former team, the Washington Nationals. That home run was the first time in 41 years that an inside the park home run was hit on Opening Day.

The 2009 season was Bonifacio’s first 100+ games played. But it wasn’t all good; he had the lowest OPS of any starter in the major leagues: .611. Also a poor performance at spring training in 2010, resulted in the Marlins to deciding to option Bonifacio to the minors.

Bonifacio would return to the major leagues when he was called up on June 6, 2010, with Mike Stanton and Rick VandenHurk. He ended up being the Marlins “super utility” and he finished the season with a batting average of .261 with 10 RBI’s in 180 at-bats, also managing to improve his OPS to .648

Last season was a heck of a season for Emilio Bonifacio. He would start the season in the bench/utility role. But, as season went on, there were bunch of injuries (Hanley Ramirez, Chris Coghlan, Omar Infante, Logan Morrison and others) that let him play almost the full season.
On May 1, 2011, he hit his first outside-the-park home run, in a game against the Cincinnati Reds.

Also, he had a super month in July, having a 26 game hitting streak as he went on to win the Player of the Month Award for the National League. This was his best season; he put up great numbers; he batted 5 home runs with 36 RBI’s…. with a batting average of .296.

Based on his improvements and accomplishments, this year promises to be a great one for Bonifacio.

Miami Marlins' Emilio Bonifacio Works

What can we expect from Emilio Bonifacio? SPEED! Bonifacio swapped 40 bases, and knowing that he could be the Marlins starting center fielder, it would give him an opportunity to reach 50 stolen bases. With the addition of All-Star shortstop Jose Reyes who stole 29 bases, we could possibly see double steals. We also expect him to get on base a lot, and to keep his batting average around .300.

Here are predictions of Emilio Bonifacio’s 2012 season by some of the major projection systems:

System Position Team AB R HR RBI SB AVG OBP SLG BB K Value
RotoChamp SS MIA 570 84 4 58 41 0.282 0.351 0.374 59 127 $13
CAIRO SS MIA 410 60 4 29 22 0.271 0.333 0.361 41 90 $0
FanGraphs Fans SS MIA 576 65 3 65 35 0.274 0.335 0.351 54 129 $2
ZIPS SS MIA 524 76 3 34 31 0.263 0.326 0.347 50 120 $-2
Composite SS MIA 480 66 3 40 30 0.275 0.341 0.356 47 103 $1
Steamer SS MIA 541 70 4 45 27 0.263 0.325 0.351 53 119 $-1

 

Marlins Nation’s Prediction: AB 544, R 80, HR 5, RBI 42, SB 45, AVG .285, OBP 0.348, SLG 0.356, BB 49, K 96

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