[caption id="attachment_335" align="alignright" width="213" caption="Drawing credit: Andrew M. Smith"]
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Winning the Triple Crown is an incredibly big deal. It's a sacred milestone that hasn’t been achieved in 45 years since Carl Yastrzemski won it for the Boston Red Sox in 1967. It’s so exceptionally difficult to attain that only 11 other players since the 19th century have captured the award, all of which are now Major League Baseball Hall of Famers.
Detroit Tigers third baseman Miguel Cabrera can now add his name to that hallowed list of company.
But is this breaking news to you? I would sure hope not. If it is, I’m honored to be the one to pull you from that enormous rock you’ve been camping out under.
Cabrera has been chasing the Triple Crown, along with the Most Valuable Player Award, for the better part of the summer. He can now officially check the former off of his 2012 to-do list, while the latter is pretty much in the bag. Winning the Triple Crown and willing his team to the playoffs in the final week of the regular season has separated Cabrera from soon-to-be Rookie of the Year Mike Trout in the MVP race. That is one debate during this presidential election year that can safely be put to rest.
These are just a couple of chapters that the Venezuelan slugger has penned into the encyclopedia-sized book known as his 2012 season. Aside from the fact that he now has the chance to lead the Tigers to their first World Series championship since 1984, Cabrera has racked up an unprecedented amount of individual accolades this season that even the biggest of Tigers fans may not be aware of.
44 home runs, 139 runs batted in and a batting average of .330. This is the gaudy stat-line that Cabrera closes out the 2012 with. But let’s examine the last part of that line for a moment. I’m no Bob James when it comes to statistical expertise, but if you win the Triple Crown, that means you have also captured the batting title (awarded to the player with the highest batting average at season’s end), correct? Well, Cabrera accomplished this last season too, making him the first Tiger to win back-to-back batting titles since Ty Cobb, who won five in a row, four in a row and three in a row, respectively, in the early-to-mid 1900’s. Cabrera also led the American League in slugging percentage (.606), on-base-plus-slugging (.999), total bases (677), and finished second in the AL in hits to Derek Jeter, totaling 205 base knocks, which was fascinatingly the first time Cabrera eclipsed the 200-hit plateau in his career. Feel free to toss in his seventh career All-Star selection for good measure.
Simply put, he tore the American League statistical leader board into pieces. I think that’s pretty well established.
Sooo…how about defense? How did the big man do when he threw the leather on and manned “the hot corner”? Correct me if I’m wrong folks, but wasn’t the preseason national consensus that Cabrera would not only be bad at third base, but that he would wind up being the worst defensive third baseman in the history of the game? Well, get this: Cabrera finished the season with 13 errors (good for middle of the pack among ML third basemen), a .966 fielding percentage (sixth out of 14 eligible defenders), a .252 range factor (seventh out of 14), and he turned 31 double plays from his position, good for second in the entire league. To me, it looks as if he flirted with the label of average to slightly above-average, rather than the label of most pathetic excuse for a third baseman in baseball history.
Miguel Cabrera has had one of the most historically mind-boggling individual seasons that many of us will ever see. The only major accomplishments left to check off of that to-do list of his would be to win his second World Series trophy, and then to take home the World Series MVP. The journey to conquer those two feats begins Saturday evening at Comerica Park when the Oakland Athletics come to town.
Oh, and did I forget to mention that Cabrera has been nominated as the Tigers representative for the 2012 Roberto Clemente award? An award given to the player who "best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement and the individual's contribution to his team"? Not bad for a guy who dealt with some nearly career-derailing alcohol problems just a few short years ago.
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