Castillo Or Coghlan: What To Make Of Miami Marlins Xavier Edwards

You don't have to be a lifelong Miami Marlins fan to remember what was once the defining question of every up and coming player every fantasy baseball season:

Are they "Bonafide...or Bonifacio"?

Centered upon the dazzling opening week performance of Marlins legend Emilio Bonifacio back in 2009, the question was made famous on the original ESPN Fantasy Focus 06010 Fantasy Baseball podcast, hosted at that time by Nate Ravitz and Matthew Berry.

Yes, that Matthew Berry. The guy from Avengers: Endgame.

Well that, and some little known work in fantasy football circles. At any rate, that clever turn of phrase far, far outlived Bonifacio's fifteen minutes of fame on the diamond, but he would live again every time the next prospect caused fans to wonder whether they were just a flash in the pan or possibly the next big thing.

Fortunately for 2024 Miami Marlins fans, I think it's safe to say that Xavier Edwards is out of Bonifacio territory.

Edwards is now 87 at bats into the 2024 campaign, and still dazzling with a .379 BA and .462 OBP. Hope for Boni being a star had evaporated in less than half that amount. And while 87 at bats is a pretty small sample size, his career total of nearly double that still leaves him with a .339/.403/.494 slash line. He gets on base, and already has 8 steals to boot. The ridiculous .397 mark Edwards has put up at the plate for nearly all of July obviously isn't sustainable. Yet even if he's just the .274 hitter his xBA suggests, that's still pretty useful, especially if the stolen bases continue at anything close to their current pace. Over 162 games, he'd steal fifty-one. Also unlikely, but also still a stud even with some serious regression.

No, the comp isn't Bonifacio anymore. It's time to determine whether Edwards is next Luis Castillo...or the next Chris Coghlan.

Put another way, is Edwards going to do something like this every season? A consistent slap hitter with an elite batting average and speed on the bases? A mainstay in the lineup, and what's more, near the top of it? That's the Luis Castillo mold.

Or is Edwards a 2009 flashback of another sort, in the mold of 2009 NL Rookie of the Year winner Chris Coghlan? Coghlan broke onto the scene in a big way in his first season in the majors, hitting .321 with a .390 OBP over 128 games. Yet he'd go on to hit higher than .260 just twice the rest of his career, and retired as .258/.334 player. So fool's gold in every way. Coghlan just did it for a full season, while Bonifacio was polite enough to knock it off after a couple weeks.

Just how real Edwards is could be the biggest question facing the Marlins the rest of the 2024 season.

On the downside, he currently sports a hilarious .444 BABIP. That's going to come back down to earth. But on the other hand, he's pretty much always hit well above .300 at every level thus far in his professional career. Unfortunately, there's really no way to know for sure until next season gets underway...assuming of course he doesn't fall off a cliff at some point this summer.

It's not a profile that is valued particularly highly right now across baseball, and that would seem to include the Marlins when you factor in the kinds of players they have been trading for and the fact they traded Luis Arraez. If he can do it though, it will be a fun throwback to those early 2000s Marlins teams.

Here's hoping for Edwards being closer to Castillo.