The Historic Nature of Miguel Cabrera

It's becoming difficult to find superlatives for the play of Miguel Cabrera, but I discovered a couple last week while listening to the Boers and Bernstein Show on Chicago's 670 The Score last week. Afternoon hosts Dan Bernstein (@dan_bernstein) and Terry Boers were discussing the historic nature of not only this season but of his career and were curious about two things.

Terry first discussed an item in Sports Illustrated (I think) that looked at Cabrera's numbers for this year and asked how often in baseball history players had a .360 average, 40+ home runs and 120+ RBI. Anytime arbitrary cut lines are introduced lists can be odd and intriguing, but in this particular case, we can already guess we're probably going to see some pretty good players:

	BA	HR	RBI	Year	Age	Tm	Lg	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	BB	SO	SB	CS	OBP	SLG	OPS
Larry Walker	.366	49	130	1997	30	COL	NL	153	664	568	143	208	46	4	78	90	33	8	.452	.720	1.172
Babe Ruth	.376	54	137	1920	25	NYY	AL	142	616	458	158	172	36	9	150	80	14	14	.532	.847	1.379
Babe Ruth	.378	59	171	1921	26	NYY	AL	152	693	540	177	204	44	16	145	81	17	13	.512	.846	1.359
Babe Ruth	.393	41	131	1923	28	NYY	AL	152	697	522	151	205	45	13	170	93	17	21	.545	.764	1.309
Babe Ruth	.378	46	121	1924	29	NYY	AL	153	681	529	143	200	39	7	142	81	9	13	.513	.739	1.252
Babe Ruth	.372	47	153	1926	31	NYY	AL	152	652	495	139	184	30	5	144	76	11	9	.516	.737	1.253
Babe Ruth	.373	46	163	1931	36	NYY	AL	145	663	534	149	199	31	3	128	51	5	4	.495	.700	1.195
Mike Piazza	.362	40	124	1997	28	LAD	NL	152	633	556	104	201	32	1	69	77	5	1	.431	.638	1.070
Chuck Klein	.386	40	170	1930	25	PHI	NL	156	721	648	158	250	59	8	54	50	4		.436	.687	1.123
Rogers Hornsby	.401	42	152	1922	26	STL	NL	154	704	623	141	250	46	14	65	50	17	12	.459	.722	1.181
Todd Helton	.372	42	147	2000	26	COL	NL	160	697	580	138	216	59	2	103	61	5	3	.463	.698	1.162
Lou Gehrig	.373	47	175	1927	24	NYY	AL	155	717	584	149	218	52	18	109	84	10	8	.474	.765	1.240
Lou Gehrig	.379	41	174	1930	27	NYY	AL	154	703	581	143	220	42	17	101	63	12	14	.473	.721	1.194
Lou Gehrig	.363	49	165	1934	31	NYY	AL	154	690	579	128	210	40	6	109	31	9	5	.465	.706	1.172
Jimmie Foxx	.364	58	169	1932	24	PHA	AL	154	702	585	151	213	33	9	116	96	3	7	.469	.749	1.218
Norm Cash	.361	41	132	1961	26	DET	AL	159	673	535	119	193	22	8	124	85	11	5	.487	.662	1.148
Miguel Cabrera	.360	42	128	2013	30	DET	AL	122	551	470	93	169	25	1	75	80	3	0	.450	.685	1.135

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 8/26/2013.

This is an easy search with the Baseball-Reference Play Index Feature and this is a very interesting list. 

FULL DISCLOSURE--this table was generated using data through Sunday, but his average dropped to .359 after Monday's game.

There are the old-school Lively Ball (it wasn't) Era hitters like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby and Chuck Klein, Hall of Famers all and deservedly so, but it needs to be understood just how much offense increased in the 1920s and 1930s--this chart shows the batting average leap beginning in 1920 through around 1941 when World War II affected everything from available players to materials to make baseballs:

The National League average batting average was .303 in 1930, a full 50 points above what it will likely be for both leagues in 2013. In 1930 Chuck Klein hit .386 when the league batted .303, or about 27.4% better than the league. Cabrera's .359 compared to the AL's .256 is 40.2% better--Cabrera is hitting over 100 points better than the league. Some day I'll follow up on THAT to see how often it occurs, but I suspect it won't be often.

Since this is a small list I can use advanced metrics from FanGraphs to give a fuller picture. This chart adds two very useful numbers, Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) and Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) for the 17 seasons in the chart above:

wOBA is a Tom Tango creation that moves beyond traditional hitting metrics by  measuring value they deliver instead of just counting them. Scaling it to resemble traditional hitting metrics helps to understand how good a season a player had. Suffice it to say that any season with an wOBA of .400 or higher is excellent, which makes these 17  seasons simply stellar. 

wRC+ is another Tom Tango creation that allows comparisons of offensive production across parks and eras. Any time there is a "+" after a number (usually OPS+ for offensive players, ERA+ for pitchers) it means the number is normalized. If you know and understand this, skip to the next paragraph. All normalization means is how much better the player was compared to the league. For example, Cabrera has an OPS of 1.137 and an OPS+ of 202. You can see the calculation for yourself here, but in essence this states that Cabrera's OPS+ is twice as good as the league's. Here are the pertinent numbers:

If you actually follow the formula and do the math, well, I got an OPS+ of 210 vs. his actual 202, but I chalk that up to me. The League values do NOT include Cabrera's production, so that's not it--let's just leave it aside for now since the important point remains the same--his production is DOUBLE the league's average, and this is historic.


wRC+, with a "+" behind it, is another normalized stat with a league average of 100. Cabrera's wRC+ is 206, again showing that his production is twice the league average. This chart shows every season since 1901 in which a player had a wRC+ of 200 or higher:

 































These 32 seasons can be grouped:
1. Enhanced offense years from 1994-2004 (Frank Thomas excepted)
2. The absolute best hitters in baseball between 1940-1960 in Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial
3. The Lively Ball hitters already discussed
4. The Dead Ball Era in which Ty Cobb and Ruth (and no one else) were able to transcend the lack of home runs and still generate tremendous offensive production. Not that I care all that much for RBI, but Cobb drove in 102 with only 6 home runs in 1917.

And then there's Cabrera, the first such season since 1957 (I'll discount Thomas's 1994 slightly because it was a strike-shortened year and the others between 1994-2004 have their well-known issues)--the first such season in FIFTY-SIX YEARS.

A season is a season, and by this point it's safe to state that Cabrera's 2013 isn't a fluke, After the discussion of these seasons, Dan Bernstein mentioned that Cabrera has averaged around .320 and 33 home runs in his last 10 seasons--how many stretches in baseball history matched this?

This is very solid company and helps put modern players in their proper historical context. I'll discuss this in far greater depth when we get closer to Hall of Fame balloting but there is a tendency to place greater emphasis on numbers for players we DIDN'T see play vs. those we did. It's a spin on the old "familiarity breeds contempt" notion that we discount and take for granted what we can see, but when the time for evaluation comes for Albert Pujols, Vladimir Guerrero, Frank Thomas and Manny Ramirez, this level of sustained excellence will have to be taken into consideration. There will be other factors as Mike Piazza already discovered and at some point baseball will have to make some kind of determination on how to handle players from approximately 1990-2007, but that's a different post. In an age where virtually anything is labeled "historic," it is very important to recognize the truly stunning when it is seen.

It used to be rare to hit 40 home runs, and around 1995 it became far more prevalent, but that incidence has shrunk again. How much this is due to reduced PED use vs. other factors won't be known for a long time, but it appears only Cabrera and Chris Davis will cross that threshold in 2013. In this day and age we can't automatically assume Cabrera will be able to continue his offensive production into his late 30s, but it's very important to remember that he's only 30 now--if he puts up 3 more solid-to-spectacular seasons (and not even equal to this year--we're entering an era where .300/30 HR/100 RBI will again be special), he'll have achieved a level of sustained excellence that is extremely rare in baseball history. 

There are good young hitters in baseball today--Paul Goldschmidt for power, Mike Trout for overall offensive production, Yasiel Puig for raw potential, but it might be quite some time before we see the likes of Miguel Cabrera again, someone who puts it all together in one package. I didn't mention WAR all that much in this post because it wasn't my focus, but it helps illustrate his defensive shortcomings--he easily had the worst fielding season of any of the 17 seasons in the chart. I'm sure there's a breakeven point where his defensive shortcomings would overcome his offensive output--here are his FanGraphs WAR values:

 

Cabrera's hitting has generated around 67 runs, his fielding has cost around 15 runs. So far this season he's made 12 errors, suggesting he'd have to make something around 60 errors or so in order for his fielding to be detrimental. He'll probably end the season with around 15-17 errors and adding another 15-20 runs with his hitting. In other words his hitting outweighs his fielding by around a 4:1 factor or so. Breaking down WAR into its components is very useful for precisely this reason, to see at what point defensive liabilities transcend hitting, but in Cabrera's case, it's not even close.

This last chart is so big that I'll finish writing and then put it in, but take the time to not just look at it but study it for what it shows--the difference between the player with the highest wRC+ and the second-highest by year. For example, Chris Davis's 182 wRC+ is 13.2% below Cabrera's, one of the largest gaps between #1 and #2 in recent years for players not named Barry Bonds. As you look at the names and differences on this list, it should become apparent how amazing Cabrera's season is, because he's accomplishing it in what is NOT a hitter's era like between 1920-1940 and 1995-2007. Pitching is on the rise and Cabrera STILL is having one of the best offensive seasons in baseball history. This is why I use numbers--not just to show something, but to hopefully illustrate how special a given season is, and these numbers aren't cherry-picked to paint a picture. There's a mix of traditional and sabermetric, and the only real question left in my mind is if any MVP voter will have the audacity to NOT use their first place ballot for Cabrera.