Sometimes, even a rutting pig gets lucky and finds a truffle.
It could be argued that the Cubs best player in the first part of this season is Emilio Bonifacio.
Bonifacio in his first 24 games has hit .337, .395 OBP, with 10 SB and a 0.9 WAR (which projects for the full season at 5.6 WAR). He also has a fine fielding percentage of .974 while playing 5 different positions. As a super-utility player, Bonifacio has turned into a de facto starter.
When the Royals released him, Bonifacio was probably the 751st best player in baseball (based upon every team had 25 players on their major league rosters). If you exclude the Cubs, then he moves up to the 725th best player in the majors. And if you extrapolate his WAR pace, he is playing at a level of a Top 60 player in baseball.
So the best player on the Cubs current roster was ranked as a AAAA player by the league at the end of spring training. Nothing really happened to Bonifacio except that he got playing time with the Cubs, and earned a roster spot. A roster spot on one of the worst Cubs squads in 50 years. For if Bonifacio started the year as the 751st player in baseball, and quickly rose to the ranks of Best Cub, that implies that the rest of the 24 man roster for the team is also collectively wandering at the 750 level. (There are a few exceptions, such as Rizzo, Castro hitting and Samardzija pitching, but as a team of interchangeable spare AAAA parts, it is easy to see how a motivated Bonifacio has risen to the top of the depth chart.)
