If anything makes baseball fun, it’s unpredictability. This MLB season has given several examples, with positive notes such as Matt Carpenter’s good time with the New York Yankees or the great career closure of a star like Albert Pujols, who had been diminished in recent years.
But it is inevitable to try to guess what would have happened if history had been different with the cases of some Major League players.
And Miguel Cabrera’s is a good example. The Venezuelan of the Detroit Tigers is destined to finish with his fewest home runs in a season in which he at least played 100 games.
Until Friday he had 4, a figure that would have been impossible to believe 10 years ago.
In 10 of his 20 seasons in the majors, Cabrera hit at least 30 home runs. Two of those times were more than 40 homers that he connected (44, the years in which he was MVP: 2012 and 2013).
But the injuries were relentless to what was once the most feared slugger in the majors. Assuming that the punishment of his physical problems had not happened and that the Aragüeño had maintained that average home run production, his numbers today would be very different.
On Sept. 18, 2012, Miguel Cabrera used this bat to slug two home runs, putting him at 40 for the year and making him the 7th player in @tigers history to do so. A few weeks later he was named the AL MVP, capping off his Triple Crown season #HOFStartingNine https://t.co/NU5R2Ra8p7 pic.twitter.com/GyjmMnuus6
— National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum ⚾ (@baseballhall) July 15, 2020
Just a year ago Cabrera celebrated the conquest of his 500 career homer. Right now it runs with 506.
But that figure could even have been more than 620 hits today, with a projection of 650 at the end of his career in 2023. This, of course, in the hypothetical case that he had continued to hit an average of 30 home runs by year.
