It's still only a week into the season, but the more I see of Emilio Bonifacio the more I'm convinced he's going to be a real weapon for the Marlins, and not just the speedy equivalent of Tuffy Rhodes.

In the top of the eighth tonight he greeted new Braves pitcher Jeff Bennett with a sick infield hit. He smacked a 2-2 pitch hard up the middle. Yunel Escobar grabbed it cleanly but had to take a stutter-step to plant his feet and turn towards first, and that was all Bonifacio needed to beat it out.

The impressive thing to me though wasn't his speed down the line. We knew that already. The thing that caught my notice was the whole plate appearance itself. He took two balls to begin the at-bat, then took a third 2-0 pitch to force Bennett to prove he could find the plate. He then fouled off a couple of high fastballs (one of which was dropped by Garret Anderson) before getting one he could beat into the ground.

Six pitch at-bats are exactly the kind of thing you want from your leadoff hitter, and he had an eight pitch at-bat a few innings prior against a tiring Javy Vazquez. The overall results in that department have been OK but not great (he came into the game having seen 100 pitches in 29 plate appearances, for a 3.45 P/PA average) but if he maintains a patient approach, he'll keep getting opportunities to use his speed even if he doesn't see a huge spike in his walk rate.

In fact, given the type of player he is I'd be more worried about a hamstring pull than I would be about his suddenly falling off the map.