5 great feats of his career

The baseball world knows Cabrera’s career well since that June 2003 when he broke into the majors as one of the top prospects in baseball with the Marlins at the age of 20. Today he is, on his statistical sheet and resume, a sure member of the Hall of Fame as he is only the seventh among more than 20,000 ballplayers to reach 3,000 hits, including more than 500 home runs among those.

Watch this list: Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Albert Pujols, Eddie Murray, Rafael Palmeiro and Alex Rodriguez.

Today the question is. Beyond those 3000 hits and 500 home runs, what are the 5 most relevant aspects of Miguel Cabrera’s career as a player? I won’t include great moments like the famous home run against Roger Clemens in the 2003 World Series that resulted in the last Marlins title, or carrying Detroit to the World Series in 2012 where they lost to an inspired Giants.

Here I leave you, according to the perspective of this humble writer who has followed Cabrera’s career since even before signing to the pros, the most compelling reasons for that skinny kid from Maracay to be considered and remembered among the greatest ballplayers of all time.

5. The 1,800 home run club

“A life is not important except for the impact it has on other lives” was one of Jackie Robinson’s most famous phrases, which is why the collective game is as important as personal achievements, and despite the new baseball metrics that weight other offensive contributions with variables that were not taken into account before, runs batted in continue to be one of the favorite of ballplayers.

There is nothing like being the man who put the runs on the scoreboard to achieve a victory and Cabrera has been among the greatest in the history of the sport in this category. Only 22 hitters, including Miguel, have surpassed the 1,800-RBI mark. Men like Reggie Jackson, David Ortiz and Sammy Sosa, despite knocking on the door, are not in the elite club.

Cabrera surpassed 1,800 last year and in his 15 years in Detroit is the 5th in franchise history, practically the only one in the modern era, behind icons of this historic team that has had lifelong wearers of this uniform such as Ty Cobb, Al Kaline and Charlie Gehringer.

He is only one of four Latin American-born players in this group: Pujols, Palmeiro and Manny Ramirez, all with immortal pedigree.

4. 20 seasons in MLB

In my perspective, baseball itself is a constant struggle against longevity. Every day on a major league field is a successful day. Just being on the active roster for one day is the goal and lifetime achievement of many ballplayers over the course of more than 150 years.

In Cabrera’s case, we knew he would be an impact player because of his natural talent, but it was almost unthinkable that he would surpass Luis Aparicio, who for decades was the Venezuelan with the most MLB seasons. Cabrera is playing his 20th season in the majors, surpassing the 18 of the only Venezuelan in Cooperstown. However, both are surpassed by Omar Vizquel who accumulated 24 seasons and who until last week was the foreigner with the most games in MLB history, surpassed today by Albert Pujols.

For the number of Latino players signed in history, the probability of playing in the Major Leagues is less than 10%. Calculating the probability of playing 20 years in the Major Leagues should not exceed 1%. Achieving this figure is synonymous with commitment, persistence, conduct and leadership.

All of these are met by Miguel, who in turn has overcome legal and personal off-field issues, injuries and offensive inconsistencies.

3. Lifetime average of .310

In an era where batting average is a secondary consideration and despite the sabermetric reasons that consider statistics such as OPS and on-base percentage as of greater value, even in the collective psyche of “world baseball,” hitting for three out of every ten innings continues to be a reason for praise.

It is a sign of the great sporting and mechanical difficulty of the action of batting and even more so in what is considered in this sport to be offensively consistent: 3 hits and 7 failures for every 10 opportunities.

No other sport allows so many failures. Any fractional figure that exceeds 3/10 and that in spurts of 4 and 5 hits out of every 10 at-bats is extraordinary.

Cabrera is the current leader in batting average among the 1200 active major league players with .310. In 11 of his 20 seasons including the current one he has accumulated an average above .300, including 4 batting titles, the highest at .348.

Miggy would be a free agent at the end of 2023 and all indications are that next year is his farewell at age 40. He would have to have two extremely unproductive seasons to lower his lifetime average to .300. In 2022 he has gotten off to a much better start than his last two seasons and looks in better physical shape, which is not only good news for Detroit, but we could see a flash in the pan at the end of this star player’s career.

Albert Pujols after his 21st season dropped his lifetime average from the .300 mark. His six seasons prior to 2021 were truly unproductive, batting just .247. That does not appear to be the case for Cabrera, who looks to finish his career with the currently underappreciated, but much-desired lifetime average of .300.

2. The Triple Crown

Whoever is old enough to remember the 2012 season (if you haven’t noticed, 10 years have passed) fully enjoyed an event that rarely happens in baseball: the Triple Crown of batting.

Leading the league in average, home runs and runs batted in for the sabermetric world is of secondary importance. But for the common fan and for the ballplayers, to be able to lead the league in these categories in the same season and even more so by playing 161 games is something extremely extraordinary.

I repeat, EXTRAORDINARY, FROM ANOTHER PLANET. I am not saying it myself, dozens of ballplayers who have shared a field in these two decades with Cabrera are saying it. The most common adjective used for Miggy in a field is: EXTRATERRESTRIAL.

Once his teammate Victor Martinez, one of the finest Latin hitters of the last decades said: “I call him Miguel de la Luna because I really can’t explain to myself how he can hit certain pitches at this level with such ease. His command of the strike zone is out of this world. He sees hitting in a very different way than the rest of us and when he explains it to us he thinks we all see it like he does, but he doesn’t realize his extraordinary gift for hitting a ball”.

So much is his mastery and vision that Cabrera once argued to the head umpire of a game that the batter’s box was mismarked. MISMARKED at the Major League level! Such was his certainty that the umpires asked to measure the stripes and distances on the field and indeed found that the batter’s box was inches out of legality, so they had to wait for the box to be re-marked for Cabrera. If you have not yet seen this episode, I invite you to look it up on YouTube and be amazed.

In 2012 he achieved this feat reserved for horses that win the top three races in American horseracing. It is so out of the ordinary in baseball that it has only happened in the National and American League combined 15 times, and it was the first time since Carl Yastrzemski did it in 1967 with Boston.

To achieve this you must be an average hitter and power, do it consistently for 6 months at the highest level, while being accurate in the towing capacity, first in getting teammates in circulation and second to have the “clutch” to bring them to the plate and generate runs.

It is normal that when we see power hitters today their offensive average does not compete for a batting title, for reasons of the takeoff angle that today’s home run hitters style or the search to move runners that today’s underpowered players pursue. The combination of both is not common and is reserved for superstars on their way to the Hall of Fame. An example of the new generation: Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Miguel plays on autopilot. He learned to hit early, tries to be consistent based on training, struggles with the inclement weather of active life and still enjoys a playing field and the baseball environment. He understands his impact and significance, but in the face of such dominance and with such a large comfort zone, he has little capacity for wonder at what he can do or not do.

1. WAR of 68.8

Ahhh, the “Wins Above Replacement”, the flagship measurement of sabermetrics that gives a numerical value to a player according to his contribution to the team in comparison to an average player. Cabrera accumulates 68.8 in his 20-year career, the highest number among the more than 440 Venezuelans in history.

Let’s go further. The all-time WAR leader is Barry Bonds, almost touching above Babe Ruth with 162.8 and 162.7 respectively.

Some will say: But Cabrera, with all his at-bats, has only 68?

Miguel ranks 76th all-time. That is, among more than 20,000 players in the history of Major League Baseball, only 124 have more than 60 WAR points (or wins). In fact the 124th in history is none other than one Ichiro, narrowly edging out one Vladimir Guerrero Sr.

Cabrera’s value to his teams is at the level of Tony Gwynn, Manny Ramirez, he surpassed Eddie Murray and a certain Roberto Alomar. We are talking about a Hall of Fame level. His stats at some point in his career are comparable to Ted Williams and Hank Aaron. That’s how great this career has been.

Of all the starters in Cooperstown, his WAR ranks 11th if we were to place him among his 23 enthroned positional peers, whose average WAR is 65.5.

His intangible value lives at Comerica Park. For the past 15 years he has been the soul and brand of Motor City baseball, the best-selling jersey, the ballplayer kids want to see and crave an autograph or a picture of. Once he reaches the end of the road he will have left a legacy that will be difficult to overcome in the short and medium term in this organization.

And if all goes well and his focus remains on exemplary conduct off the field, he will be a first ballot Hall of Fame inductee and in theory the second Venezuelan to be immortalized, a long-awaited achievement for his country which among so many individual baseball successes has yet to celebrate a Cooperstown induction since 1984.