Hearing about Miguel Cabrera’s closing in on 3,000 hits, my mind at first was a little surprised that he was at that stage of his career, seeing as how I still feel like it was yesterday that this spry thin third baseman for the then-Florida Marlins was showing off impressive power for his age. But when I actually put more than five minutes of thought behind it, I realize that it’s really of no surprise at all that he’s at this stage of his career, because basically there’s never been any season where Miguel Cabrera has played where he has been an ineffective hitter.
Even way back, I always had pegged Miggy as a guy that would probably be an MVP-caliber guy, seeing as how he broke into the majors at like 20 years old. But the thing is, he showed up at a time where guys like Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez were the marquee hitters of MLB, and sluggers like Barry Bonds, Vladimir Guerrero and Frank Thomas were still around. It was easy for a guy like Miguel Cabrera to kind of get lost in the shuffle.
But nearly 20 years later, most of those guys are gone, be it through retirement, collusion, age, degradation of skills or any combination of the above. Albert Pujols is the only guy still active, and he’s at the twilight of his career where he’s doing his farewell tour for the team that brought him into the world, after a pretty unimpressive contract with the Angels.
And Miguel Cabrera is still around; although age is catching up to him, taking some power away, he’s still hitting the ball for a decent average in a period of the game where batting averages are bordering on historically bad. Honestly, my knee-jerk thoughts were wondering on where Cabrera stood on possibly being the greatest of all-time, or just the best player for a generation, but clearly I’ve been not paying enough attention to the numbers or the game in general, and upon a closer examination, the last few years haven’t been as kind to him as I thought they might have been.
All the same, I felt like writing some words in appreciation of Miguel Cabrera. Father Time might have grabbed him by the scruff five years ago, but up to that point, the guy was probably on track to be as good as Hank Aaron from a consistently great standpoint. And I think it’s still safe to put Miggy on the pedestal of possibly being the greatest player of his generation, because when you look at his personal accomplishments throughout his career, there’s only some really snug and exclusive company in numerous categories: Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Albert Pujols.
But when you factor in the fact that Miguel Cabrera has hit for the triple-crown (traditional and the geeky sabermetric) on top of everything else, that literally puts him in a category of his own; Triple-crown winner, MVP, 3,000 hits and 500 home runs.
Statisticians tend to poorly favor those who decline quickly, like Cabrera has been over the last five years, which will likely take him out of the GOAT debates, but there’s no mistaking that with his body of work and all his achievements throughout his career, Miggy’s name definitely deserves to be mentioned frequently as one of the GOATs. It’s just hard to imagine that in a game rich with history and numbers, that my generation would be one to have been able to witness and watch one of them rise, thrive and produce throughout his career.
