Emilio Bonifacio - Worth Trading?

Alright, you got the bunting part. Still, though, you're shrugging off the observational aspect of things where we saw him look completely different at the plate. That's nothing you can put a stat on.

But my argument is that his improvements, which do exist and are statistically significant, nonetheless are not representative of the jump he made. And that our collective perceptions of those improvements are colored by the fact that he had an extra hit or two drop in every week at an unsustainable rate.

I'm not arguing he didn't improve. I'm arguing that we're blowing those individual improvements out of proportion because it seemed like the total package improved so much. But the total package only seemed to improve so much because of unsustainable conversion rate on balls in play. Simply put, nobody sustains a .372 batting average on balls in play. It's just not a skill that you see carry from one season to the next in almost all players. Maybe he is an anomaly and can keep it going. But you never bet on an anomaly.

This is confirmation bias. We saw him play better, so we are coloring in everything else as a way to explain it. He made small but significant improvements across the board, and almost as importantly, did not seem to lose any skills while doing so. He didn't sacrifice for those small improvements. And those small improvements are why he has gone from not deserving of a major league roster spot to being a pretty valuable utility/sub player.

But the .372 mark on balls in play is causing people to overstate those small improvements to try to justify the large jump he made, when the fact of the matter is the large jump is, more likely than not, a mirage. When you focus on the actual repeatable skills he showed last year, you get an image of a really nice utility player, but a guy who is stretched thin as an everyday hitter.