Miguel Cabrera Strikes Back
Sometimes trades fail to work out immediately. Dave Dombrowski traded the farm prior to the 2008 season for Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis – the perceived final pieces of a championship puzzle – only to see both play well shy of expectations. For the first time in four years, Cabrera posted an OPS below .900 – not quite the fall from grace Willis experienced, but also not the alpha dog Detroit desired. For a multitude of other reasons, the Tigers collapsed around the pair, and failed to qualify for the playoffs.
It’s fitting that as the Tigers bounce back, so does Cabrera; who is experiencing a sophomore bump during his second season in the Motor City. His .395 wOBA falls in line with seasons of the past. Not only is he hitting well through component measures like homers and OPS, but Cabrera is literally hitting the ball hard. Hit Tracker Online lists Cabrera as current “Golden Sledgehammer” leader, meaning Cabrera’s long balls are averaging a longer distance than anyone else in the league. Cabrera’s dozen dingers have an average standard distance of 423.7 feet, a full 60 inches further than runner-up Michael Cuddyer.
Any talk of American League pitchers mastering Cabrera is over. His walk rates are creeping upwards and his amount of whiffing borders near a career low. A .341 BABIP rarely constitutes being “below expectations”, but this is true in Cabrera’s case. From 2006-2008 Cabrera maintained a higher average BABIP as well as a higher ISO. The difference seems to arise from an increased amount of groundballs hit. These are leading to an influx of additional singles and a decrease in doubles; buoying Cabrera’s batting average while leaving his slugging emptier than usual. Given his homeruns, it seems apparent Cabrera still has a fantastic amount of power, so at some point the doubles should come.
Cabrera should breeze past the four win mark and could make a legitimate run at five wins. He won’t quite match the total value attained during his seasons as a third baseman – the first base positional penalty just won’t allow it – still, Detroit will be hard pressed to find much fault in Cabrera’s 2009.
41
Did anyone think Willis was a piece and not a salary dump with a slight chance of turning it around?
Yes, I did… that’s why I gave him a fat contract extension before he ever threw a pitch in Detroit.
Look at Cabrera’s second half of 2008. He struck back then.
This only seems anecdotal in my head and I’m sure someone smarter than I could put numbers to this either prove or disprove it.
It seems like players moving from the NL to the AL have an adjustment period where they perform below their projected levels while adjusting to their new environment.
Adjustment period, maybe. But Cabrera was limping through April and May last year on a gimpy leg. He didn’t move very well at all until the All-Star break. It’s hard to see all this on TV, but I had a 27-game package, and it was really interesting to watch him jog back to the dugout or even warm up between innings. You could see the evidence of it in plain sight. But he fought through it like a pro. This is often forgotten, and people look at the numbers and just think “slump”.
Clarification: I’m talking about 2008, of course. Incidentally, the club called it a “quadriceps” injury, but it sure looked like “groin”.
Absolutely correct. American League pitching is much better, so the adjustment factor is apparent for those coming from the National League (also see Holiday), and creates a cake walk for most of those moving in the other direction (see Raul Ibanez).
There’s a reason the National League typically suffers in interleague, the All Star game and the World Series.
And you have nothing to actually back that up. If anything, the reason the NL typically suffers in interleague is because they end up with a utility man in the DH spot or in the field for a DHing regular in the AL park.
As for the comparisons you use, they aren’t good ones. Holliday was a product of Coors and everyone knew it, except perhaps Billy Beane, looking at his home/road stats. That he only hit 25 HRs last year at Coors had to be a warning sign, especially considering he was moving to one of the most notorious pitcher’s parks in baseball. Remember too that Holliday is a fastball hitter and he went to a league where fewer fastballs are thrown and saw a 3% drop, not an insignificant number.
Ibanez was the reverse. He went from one of the biggest pitcher’s parks to one of the best hitter’s parks, especially for left-handed hitters.
Um, he has a lot more than “nothing” to back up his statements. Since interleague play began in 1997, up until 2008, the AL has a 1536-1420 in interleague games (with only 5 AL teams below .500 in interleague play during this span), 11-0-1 in All-Star Games, and 7-5 in World Series with a staggering 38-23 game record. Seems pretty obvious the AL is superior.
Also, the utility man argument is just one side of the coin, since AL teams lose one of their best hitters when playing in NL parks.
Regarding Holliday, looking at home/road stats is a terrible way to evaluate a hitter’s potential performance in a new ballpark. Epic fail. Also, he’s not really a fastball hitter since he has better career weighted values against sliders and changeups. Besides, a 3% decrease is quite insignificant–you’re talking about something like 18-25 plate appearances worth of pitches over a full season. Yawn.
Ibanez isn’t really helpful to your argument (if you even have one) either, since Safeco is actually somewhat favorable to left-handed hitters. Sure, he’d still get a little bit of a bump moving to Citizens Bank, but not nearly as much as he’s apparently gotten from facing weaker competition.
BIP says:
“Regarding Holliday, looking at home/road stats is a terrible way to evaluate a hitter’s potential performance in a new ballpark. Epic fail. ”
Except that in Holliday’s case, “home” was the quite exceptional Coors Field. If he rakes in Coors, but nowhere else, you have to ask why.
Al->NL thing isn’t universal, although there seem to be a fair number of cases. Manny Ramiriz would be a stunning example of the opposite effect, although Jason Bay didn’t seem to be affected at all. Texeira was another one it didn’t seem to bother, although he had just came from the AL. The effect seems to be there, but it’s not universal.
I wonder if that homer-distance stat means much. It takes a longer homer to go out at CoPa anyway, so why wouldn’t Tigers almost automatically be overrepresented among the league’s longest-homer stats? Not to say Cabrera doesn’t belt the bejeezus out of the ball, mind you.