Kuzul

When Miguel Cabrera steps up to the plate, you stop what you are doing because odds are good you will see something amazing. It is a testament to his natural talent and evolution as a hitter, though the magic of numbers makes it so we can tell you how he does it. 

There are very few athletes you drop everything to watch. The two baseball players I have to watch every time they play are Cabrera and Mike Trout. Albert Pujols used to be in that category in his prime. 

Yet there is something about watching Cabrera that fascinates me because he doesn’t look like a traditional athlete. He has worked on conditioning in recent years to slim down, but he’s got one of the worst bodies you will find on an elite athlete. 

Cabrera has mastered the art of hitting, posting a .366/.459/.692 slash line with 37 home runs and a 72-69 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 415 at-bats this season. If you look back at the last 162 games, the Tigers third baseman is hitting a remarkable .359/.438/.681 with 53 home runs. 

Instead of simply gushing over Cabrera’s ability as a hitter, because everyone has done that, we wanted to look at the numbers and figure out why he has gotten to be so much better than the rest of the league. 

The Average

Looking over Cabrera’s career, he has never been a bad hitter for average. That is a remarkable feat considering he was brought up midway through the 2003 season at the age of 20 and played his first full season in 2004 at the age of 21. 

Cabrera’s worst career slash line came in 2008 (.292/.349/.537). It is hard to find fault with a player who has a season like that, much less when that is your worst season to date after 11 years in the league. 

But over the last three years, Cabrera has really taken his game to another level. He has won back-to-back batting titles, hitting .344 in 2011 and .330 in 2012, and will add another one this season thanks to a .366 average through 109 games (36 points ahead of Trout). 

One of the biggest differences between Cabrera now is the rate at which he hits line drives. While he has always driven the ball incredibly well, Cabrera has gotten better in the last three years, as you can see from the table below. 

Even though Cabrera’s 2012 rate is essentially the same as his career mark, his 2011 and, especially, 2013 rates are substantially higher. 

For instance, Cabrera put 483 balls in play two years ago (197 hits, 286 non-strikeout outs). Using his 2011 ratio, that would mean he hit 108 line drives. If we use his career mark to calculate the total, Cabrera would have hit 104 line drives.

That’s not a huge difference in the scheme of things, but one hard hit ball here or there could find its way over the fence or go off the wall. Every hit gives a team just one more opportunity to put a run on the board. 

If we do the same thing for Cabrera’s current season, he has hit 86 line drives. If he were hitting line drives at his career rate, Cabrera would have 74 line drives. That is a substantial difference, suggesting a little random variation in his performance this season or just another sign of growth where he is more capable of driving the ball than ever before. 

Just think if those 12 extra line drives turned into outs, Cabrera’s average would drop to .337. Obviously that’s still an incredible average, but it only gives him a small cushion over Trout for the AL lead. 

The Power

Consistency is not a hallmark that you will often see from power hitters. Of course, most power hitters aren’t Miguel Cabrera. He has hit at least 30 home runs in seven consecutive seasons. 

By comparison, the preeminent power hitter in baseball today, in my opinion, is Miami’s Giancarlo Stanton. He has shown ridiculous amounts of pop at such a young age, but because of injuries (and possible frustration with the direction of the franchise) he has only hit 13 home runs this season. 

The fact that Cabrera is maintaining that level of success in Comerica Park, which does play well to offenses but not to power, shows how great he is. 

For instance, using ESPN’s Park Factors, Comerica Park has been a top-10 stadium in runs during four of Cabrera’s six seasons with the Tigers (2008, 2011-13). But it has ranked in the bottom half of the league in home runs four times (2009-10, 2012-13). 

Also, because he has been in the league for so long, we forget Cabrera is very much in the “peak” of his career. 

During this run of offensive dominance, Cabrera was 28 in 2011, 29 in 2012 and 30 this season. For a player with his body type, those are the best years of a career. It could also result in him falling apart rather quickly in a few years, but we don’t know how long his bat speed and ability to square the ball up will last. It could hang around for six or seven more years. 

The point being that when we were seeing Cabrera hit 37 home runs at age 25 in 2008 with a .292/.349/.537 slash line, we should have expected him to get better as he reached peak physical maturity in his late 20s. 

That’s not to say we could/should have predicted this, because right now Cabrera is otherworldly. As Dave Schoenfield of ESPN.com noted in a recent post that avoided players from the “steroid era” (1993-2009), Cabrera has the best OPS+ (205) since Willie McCovey in 1969 (209) and is the first player since Barry Bonds in 1992, his final season in Pittsburgh, to have an OPS+ over 200. 

Schoenfield also noted the way that Cabrera has evolved as a hitter by raising his batting average and power output going to the opposite field:

A perfect illustration of Cabrera’s prominent offensive prowess came last week in a series against division rival Cleveland. Facing rookie Danny Salazar, who had already struck him out three times in his first three at-bats, the 2012 MVP stepped up to the plate with the Tigers down 3-2 and a man on first base. 

Cabrera looked as bad as we have seen him look since this run of dominance started in 2012. But in his fourth at-bat, on the first pitch he saw, Cabrera took a high fastball clocked at 96 over the fence in right-center field. 

The in-game adjustments are what separates the great players from the good ones, and the adjustments made from one pitch to the next are what separates the legends from the great ones. 

That pitch was a microcosm of everything that Cabrera has done so well for the last three years, and perfectly illustrates the maturity he has developed since coming to Detroit. 

Deeper Into The Metrics

Despite what some people might tell you, advanced metrics do love Miguel Cabrera just as much as they love any other great player. 

This year is no exception, as Cabrera has taken a huge step forward in several categories that measure offensive output. We mentioned his OPS+ already, but there is still a lot more that we can tackle. 

For starters, there’s weighted on-base average, which assigns a proper run-scoring value to the type of hit (single, double, triple, home run) a player gets. Cabrera has posted the three highest wOBAs of his career in the last four years.

By comparison, no player this season is within 45 points of Cabrera’s total. Chris Davis is second at .437, but the gap between first and second is greater than the gap between Davis and Paul Goldschmidt, who is eighth in the category. 

Cabrera is also setting a new standard for himself in weighted runs created plus (wRC+), which shows a player’s ability to create runs compared to the average player. It currently stands at 210 for Cabrera, which means he is 110 percent better than the average player in the AL. 

Again, Davis is second in the category but not particularly close to Cabrera at 179. Carlos Gonzalez is 31 points behind Davis but also ranks ninth in baseball. 

Cabrera is effectively lapping some of the best players that baseball has to offer, including the player I would have as the NL MVP if the season ended today (Andrew McCutchen, ranked eighth). 

Drawing Conclusions

It is becoming a bit tired to praise the greatness of Miguel Cabrera, but the things he is doing even as he reaches the age of 30 continue to astound. His offensive performance is spectacular. 

Just watching Cabrera from pitch to pitch is a treat because you can see the wheels turning. He can beat two Mariano Rivera cutters off his leg and barely be able to walk, but then he can turn the next pitch around and deposit it over the center field wall. 

Cabrera continues to get better and better with each passing season. Right when we think we have seen everything, Cabrera comes out the next day to show us something that we didn’t even know was possible. 

History will ultimately pass proper judgment on Cabrera, but right now there is no doubt about who the best pure hitter in Major League Baseball is. 

If you want to talk about Miguel Cabrera, or anything else baseball related, feel free to hit me up on Twitter. 

Follow @adamwells1985

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For the second time in as many games, Mariano Rivera has blown a New York Yankees lead. Two nights after blowing a save against the Chicago White Sox in the 12th inning, Rivera has become the latest victim of Detroit Tigers star Miguel Cabrera.

The defending American League MVP stepped up to the plate in the ninth inning against the legendary Yankees closer with former New York farmhand Austin Jackson on second. After falling down 0-2, he ran the count to 2-2, Cabrera finally got Rivera to miss his spot out over the plate—and he didn’t miss.

The Tigers third baseman sent the Rivera fastball to straightaway center field, with Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner giving chase to no avail. The blast tied the game at 3-3, and kept hope alive for the Tigers to extend their 12-game winning streak. That streak ended up coming to an end in the next frame as the Yankees scored in the bottom of the 10th on a Gardner’s game-winning single.

According to ESPN Stats & Info, Cabrera’s home run was the first game-tying against Rivera with two outs in the ninth or later since Jason Bay did so in 2009 as a member of the Red Sox. 

What’s perhaps most impressive about Cabrera’s feat is that he drove the ball to the deepest part of the park in obvious pain. Two pitches the Tigers slugger fouled off in the at-bat bashed off his leg, and he also seemed to twist his knee at one point. Sports Illustrated’s Michael Rosenberg was one of many impressed with Cabrera’s toughness:

It was also the 30-year-old Venezuelan’s 34th dinger of the year. Cabrera, the prohibitive favorite to repeat for AL MVP this season, is batting an MLB-best .360 and also leads the majors with 108 RBI. His home run total ranks only behind Orioles first baseman Chris Davis, who has 41.

Friday night was Rivera’s fourth blown save of the season. The 43-year-old future Hall of Famer has converted 35 of 39 attempts with a 2.18 ERA and 1.18 WHIP, returning to form after suffering a knee injury that prematurely ended his 2012 season.

While solid throughout the campaign, River has struggled a bit of late. He’s blown three of his past 10 attempts. Rivera will retire at the conclusion of the 2013, his 19th in the Bronx.

This was just his third appearance in August, as the Yankees have struggled to stay afloat in the AL East. New York is 10 games behind first-place Boston in the division and seven games out of the AL’s final wild-card spot.

The Tigers, buoyed by their winning streak, are 68-46 and have a 7-game lead over the Indians in the AL Central.

Follow Tyler Conway on Twitter:

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The Biogenesis saga has become the Alex Rodriguez saga. Rodriguez was hit with the oddly-constructed 211-game suspension on Monday and without explanation or evidence, it’s hard to have much of a position based on facts, though that hasn’t stopped many. 

What’s been most interesting to me is how little people seem to know about the testing program. Referred to as the “JDA” or joint drug agreement, it spells out in minute detail how the program is supposed to work. It’s legalese, but important legalese. 

Few seem to understand “A” sample and “B” samples, collection procedures, location registration, methodology for randomization, but I wouldn’t expect them to. I can see why people might gloss over lists of chemicals, appeals procedures and even the precise language requiring secrecy throughout the process, up to and including the wording of press releases. 

This document, negotiated and re-negotiated by the commissioner’s representatives and the players’ association was supposed to have governed this process but instead was shattered by it. Whether it was Bud Selig’s edict, congressional grandstanding or a public perfectly willing to let both sides make end runs around the letter of the law, the JDA is now not worth the paper it’s printed on.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article here at Bleacher Report discussing possible replacements for Bud Selig. I ended up with his most likely “replacement” being Selig himself, with the commissioner set up to once again extend his reign. Now, I’m not so sure. This episode has weakened the position of the commissioner’s role. The MLBPA will not allow the “integrity clause” to be as unfettered as it has been since the days of Landis and negotiations on the JDA itself will end up more tense. Selig likely doesn’t care.

Selig has instead lashed his legacy to this mast, forever tying himself to the beginning, the heyday and perhaps the end of the so-called steroid era. Selig wishes to be remembered as the commissioner who revived the game and perhaps saved it from an enemy greater than even an angered public after the World Series was cancelled. 

This was Selig’s moment, when he stood at the lectern and pronounced his sentence on Alex Rodriguez. While appeals and who knows what else in this saga awaits us, down to a potential 2015 return, Selig should seal the moment with his own resignation. It is clear that he feels this is his defining act and that nothing after could compare.

Selig dropped the hammer. Now he should drop the mic.

But there’s still injuries around baseball, so let’s take a look around the league:

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On Friday, Basebook Baseball Magazine writer Paul Goode wrote a solid post that begged the question: Has Miguel Cabrera surpassed Albert Pujols as the premier all-round hitter in baseball?

While reading Goode’s feature, I could not help but notice one of Cabrera’s gaudy stats. Through 46 games, Cabrera is batting .388 with 14 homers and a whopping 1.154 OPS.

More striking is Cabrera’s 57 RBI. Per ESPN, Cabrera is on pace for 201 RBI this year.

Already an MVP, batting champion and a Triple Crown winner, Cabrera is on track to have one of the best individual seasons in MLB history. Should Cabrera stay healthy and avoid a few dry spells in the batter’s box, he has a shot (albeit small) to bust Hack Wilson’s major league record for the most RBI in a single season.

According to Baseball Almanac, Wilson posted 191 RBI in 1930. Trailing Wilson is Lou Gehrig, who earned 184 RBI in 1931. Hank Greenberg is third in baseball history with 183 RBI. Greenberg sits eight RBI ahead of Jimmie Foxx (175 RBI).

Wilson’s record has been deemed by many to be one of the most untouchable records in MLB history, alongside Joe DiMaggio’s record 56-game hitting streak. This philosophy rings especially true in the post-steroid era.

Fans who think nobody will ever come close to Wilson’s gaudy RBI record have a valid point. The closest any modern player has come to Wilson’s feat is Manny Ramirez. He earned 165 RBI with the Cleveland Indians in 1999. Alex Rodriguez mustered 156 RBI with the New York Yankees in 2007, also per Baseball Almanac.

But consider this about Cabrera. Last season, the 30-year-old slugger had 139 RBI for the Tigers in 161 games. Yet Cabrera did not get RBI 57 until June 25 versus the Texas Rangers.

Cabrera is nearly a month ahead of schedule this season.

If injury is a concern, Cabrera has been as sturdy as baseball players come. Looking at Cabrera’s career stats, he has not played less than 150 games in a season since his rookie year (2003). From 2004-12, Cabrera has averaged 158 games played on a 162-game schedule.

Of course, all ballplayers endure slowdowns and slumps. Cabrera is no exception (although his slumps pale in comparison to other MLB players).

But should Cabrera maintain his rabid video-game pace, he may come eerily close to breaking Wilson’s seemingly untouchable RBI record.

And if Cabrera does, scientists may have to consider testing him to see if this superstar really is human.  

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The American League Central is one of the most interesting divisions in all of baseball this season.

The Detroit Tigers once again entered the year as runaway favorites to take the division crown, and are once again struggling at the first quarter mark, trailing the Cleveland Indians by 2.5 games.

The Indians, who finished 20 games back in the division last year with only 68 wins, are on pace to reach close to 100 wins this season, and are the hottest team in baseball, winning 18 of their last 22 games.

But unlike the Tigers, the Indians aren’t doing it with star power.

The Tigers lead the AL in runs, average and on-base percentage, but have struggled lately, going 4-6 in their last 10 games, with two of those wins coming against the dreadful Houston Astros.

Yet, most of the players on this list are donning the Old English D.

It has been a fun first quarter to watch, and has definitely been unexplainable at times, but here is my list for the AL Central Position Player All Stars at the first quarter mark:

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Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera is one of the most cerebral hitters the game of baseball has ever seen.

A career .320 hitter, Cabrera is a superstar heavyweight boxer, champion chess player and big kid wrapped into a 6’4”, 240-pound frame.

MLB pitchers who stare into the batter’s box at Cabrera know they have to outsmart the Triple Crown winner.  While some pitching staffs do have success against this 30-year-old Venezuela native, most find themselves kicking dirt in disgust. 

This includes staffs from the AL Central Division.  Per Baseball-Reference statistics, Cabrera has batted .320 (463-for-1,445) with 88 home runs, 89 doubles and 293 RBI in 380 career games against teams in this division.

While impressive, Cabrera has given five other teams outside the AL Central absolute fits in his 10-year career.  These victims of Cabrera’s brute wrath (minimum 150 plate appearances), are the subject of this slideshow. 

Source of Stats: Baseball-Reference.com and MLB.com

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Imagine Miguel Cabrera not in the blue and orange of the Detroit Tigers, but in the red and white of the Los Angeles Angels.

It could have happened.

The trade that sent Cabrera to the Tigers in 2007 feels like ancient history by now, but that didn’t stop Lyle Spencer of MLB.com from recalling this week that Cabrera was pretty close to being dealt to the Angels instead back in ’07.

“I thought I would be here,” said Cabrera during the Tigers’ trip to Anaheim this past weekend.

Now, this is not a new revelation. At the time the then-Florida Marlins were dangling Cabrera on the trade market in the winter of ’07, it was widely reported that the Angels were among the teams interested in him. Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angels Times wrote that the Angels were viewing Cabrera as the power bat they’d been craving for years.

Even still, Spencer’s article about what might have been is an excuse to have some ponderous fun. What would have happened if Cabrera had been traded to the Angels instead of the Tigers?

Let’s step into the TARDIS and go revise some history in Anaheim, Miami and Detroit.

In Anaheim

Had the Angels traded for Cabrera in 2007, he presumably would have taken Casey Kotchman‘s place at first base. If so, then the Angels would have been swapping out a guy who had an .840 OPS and 11 homers in ’07 for a guy who had a .965 OPS and 34 homers.

Which, you know, is a pretty good switch. The Angels would have been a better offensive team the following season in 2008. Instead of ranking 15th in MLB in runs scored, they likely would have ranked in the top 10.

By this same token, the Angels would have been able to do better than the .683 OPS and 13 runs they managed in the 2008 ALDS against the Boston Red Sox, a series the Sox won in four. Seeing as how the 2008 Angels were a very good team even without Cabrera—they did win 100 games, after all—it’s easy to see them going all the way to the World Series with Cabrera.

But this is oversimplifying things quite a bit. It’s just as possible that the Angels may not have made the playoffs at all in 2008 had they pulled off a trade for Cabrera.

As Spencer noted, Ervin Santana and Joe Saunders were in the discussions the Angels were having with the Marlins. They were nothing special at the time, as Santana had posted an ERA over 5.00 in 2007 and Saunders only managed a 4.44 ERA in 18 starts. Their appeal was strictly in their potential.

When Cabrera went to Detroit instead of Anaheim, the Angels kept Santana and Saunders. It’s a good thing they did, too, as they ended up being the Angels’ two best pitchers in 2008. Both made over 30 starts and had ERAs in the 3.40 range.

Per FanGraphs, Angels starters had a 4.14 ERA in 2008 that ranked 10th in MLB. Take Santana and Saunders out of the equation, and the club’s starting pitching may have been bad enough to bar the Angels from the playoffs.

One thing we know for sure, however, is that the Angels would not have traded for Mark Teixeira to play first base down the stretch in 2008. With Cabrera at first, they wouldn’t have needed him.

Not trading for Teixeira would have allowed the Angels to hold on to Elvis Andrus, Neftali Feliz, Matt Harrison and Jarrod Saltalamacchia. They would have bolstered the Angels’ roster in the ensuing seasons, thus keeping the club’s window to contend wide open.

But not dealing for Teixeira also would have meant missing out on the compensatory draft pick the Angels got when he signed with the New York Yankees (more on how that scenario would have changed in a moment).

The pick they got was the No. 25 pick in the ’09 draft. Guess who they used it on.

Yup. Mike Trout. Had the Angels traded for Cabrera in 2007, it’s possible they may have missed out on the guy who gave him a run for his money in the 2012 AL MVP race.

Possible, yes, but honestly not very likely. The Angels may have used the Yankees’ No. 25 overall pick on Trout, but they could have just as easily used their own No. 24 overall pick on him instead.

So yeah, Trout and Cabrera may indeed have ended up in the same lineup last year. Don’t think about that possibly for too long, as the sheer wonder of it is liable to make you faint.

Albert Pujols wouldn’t have been in the lineup with Trout and Cabrera, though. With Cabrera at first base, the Angels would have had no need for Pujols, so the door would have been open for him to go elsewhere after he became a free agent following the 2011 season.

And I think I know where he might have gone…

In Miami

When the Marlins dealt Cabrera to the Tigers in 2007, they were losing their best hitter.

It’s therefore surprising, in retrospect, that they proceeded to get better in 2008 rather than worse, as their record improved from 71-91 to 84-77. It’s even more surprising once you consider the fact that the players the Marlins got from the Tigers didn’t help the cause.

Andrew Miller busted. Cameron Maybin did little for the Marlins before he was moved to San Diego for Edward Mujica and Ryan Webb in 2010. None of the three other players in the Cabrera deal surpassed expectations. In all, the deal was a bust for them.

Now consider what could have happened if the Marlins had done business with the Angels instead.

In addition to Santana and Saunders, guys like Howie Kendrick, Kendrys Morales, Reggie Willits, Jeff Mathis, Nick Adenhart and Brandon Wood were trade chips the Angels had to offer. Had the Marlins walked away with, say, Santana, Saunders and either Kendrick or Morales, they would have found themselves with two quality major league pitchers and a quality major league hitter.

Combine these guys with the talented players the Marlins already had—Hanley Ramirez, Dan Uggla, Josh Willingham, Cody Ross, Josh Johnson, Ricky Nolasco, et al.—and they would have been able to do better than 84-77 in 2008. They would have arisen as a legit threat to the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets in the division, and they would have been there to stay.

And that’s significant, as you’ll recall that the Phillies only topped the Marlins by six games to win the NL East in 2009. Had the Marlins gotten an influx of talent from the Angels in ’07, they could have stopped the Phillies from winning the division and, by extension, from winning the World Series.

Of course, it’s likely that none of this would have stopped Marlins Park from happening, meaning team owner Jeffrey Loria may still have found himself looking for big-name talent in the 2011-12 offseason.

That means Loria probably still would have found himself courting Prince Albert. And with the Angels out of the picture due to Cabrera’s presence at first base, it’s probable that there wouldn’t have been anybody to match Loria’s offer to Pujols.

As Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported, Loria’s offer to Pujols was a major one: 10 years and $275 million. And because the Marlins would have been a quality team in this universe, Pujols surely would have been more keen to accept Loria’s offer.

Loria’s victory, however, may have been short-lived.

Pujols wouldn’t have been any younger with the Marlins in 2012 than he was with the Angels, after all. And since it’s nigh impossible to hit home runs at Marlins Park, it’s probable that Pujols would have slumped worse with the Marlins than he did with the Angels.

If that had happened, the Marlins probably wouldn’t have avoided the fire sale they had at the trade deadline last year. Moreover, they could have ended up jettisoning Pujols this past offseason, just as they jettisoned Jose Reyes less than a year after signing him.

So, in essence, trading Cabrera to the Angels instead of the Tigers may not have stopped the Marlins from being the Marlins.

But what would have happened in Detroit while all this was going on? How would the Tigers have responded to missing out on Cabrera?

In Detroit

When the Angels were discussing Cabrera with the Marlins in 2007, they really didn’t need either a new third baseman or a new first baseman. They had Kotchman at first and Chone Figgins at third, and both of them were above-average players.

The Tigers were in a different boat. They had Brandon Inge at third base, and the 2007 season saw him post a mere .688 OPS. Sean Casey was their first baseman in 2007, but he left as a free agent at the end of the season.

Since the Tigers had Gary Sheffield, Magglio Ordonez and Curtis Granderson at the time, they didn’t desperately need Cabrera’s bat. But when he arrived, he certainly filled a need.

The big question: How would the Tigers have filled this need if they hadn’t landed Cabrera?

Good one. There weren’t any impact first basemen on the free-agent market after the 2007 season, so the Tigers surely would have made do with a stopgap option at first base.

When the 2008-09 offseason came around, however, they may have chosen to aggressively pursue the top first baseman on the market: Mark Teixeira.

That would have made for quite the bidding war. The Tigers would have been in there with the Yankees and the Red Sox, who supposedly made Teixeira an eight-year offer that winter (via Ian Browne of MLB.com). With no Cabrera on their payroll, the Tigers might have actually been able to win the bidding for Teixeira.

Would they have been a better team with him rather than with Cabrera? That’s doubtful, but their future activities on the free-agent front certainly would have been drastically altered.

With the switch-hitting Teixeira already at the heart of their lineup, the Tigers likely wouldn’t have felt the need to sign Victor Martinez after the 2010 season. If so, him tearing his ACL early on in 2012 wouldn’t have mattered to them in the slightest.

That would have been somebody else’s problem, rather than Detroit’s excuse to sign Prince Fielder.

This, of course, would be the same Fielder who contributed a .412 OBP and 30 homers to Detroit’s cause in 2012. Of those 30 homers, 14 of them came in August and September to help the Tigers get to the postseason. From there, they went to the World Series.

With Teixeira and who-knows-who-else at the corners instead of Cabrera and Fielder, the Tigers probably would have fallen short of the World Series last year. 

For that matter, it’s not hard to imagine them getting beat by Cabrera, Trout and the star-studded Angels.

Adding It All Up

I guarantee you that every single scenario I outlined above would have come to fruition if Cabrera had been traded to the Angels instead of the Tigers in 2007.

OK, that’s a lie. The truth is that I have no blinkin‘ idea what would have happened specifically. I won’t until I get my hands on a real TARDIS.

But what would have happened generally? Yeah, I’ve got the right idea, and that’s that the fallout from Cabrera being traded to the Angels instead of the Tigers would have been very far-reaching and very significant. Baseball history would have been thrown for a loop.

The fates of three franchises would have been drastically altered. The fates of the franchises around those franchises also would have been drastically altered, and there’s the probability that the fates of bystanders like the possibly Teixeira-less Yankees would have been drastically altered as well.

Imagine a baseball universe where up is down, down is up, left is right, right is left and dogs and cats are living together. That there’s a baseball universe where Cabrera is an Angel.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter. 

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Torii Hunter, Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder have been tearing the cover off the ball so far this baseball season, and they don’t look to be slowing down anytime soon.

The Detroit Tigers‘ 2-3-4 hitters are leading the team in batting average in their same respective lineup order to help the struggling Tigers keep their heads above water.

For most of the first month of the season, the Tigers’ top three hitters led boasted the best batting average and on-base percentage in the American League.

Detroit has struggled over the past week, losing its last four games to fall to fourth in AL team batting average, but the Tigers’ stars are doing their jobs.

Here is why the Tigers’ three best hitters will continue their torrid pace for the rest of the season:

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Major League Baseball has somewhat transitioned into a pitcher’s league—as we’ve seen an increase in perfect games and no-hitters the past few seasons—but the league still has its share of feared hitters that no pitcher wants to see in the batter’s box.

From on-base percentages to threats to go deep, each hitter brings an arsenal to the plate that has proven to overpower pitchers in the past.

So who made the cut for the 15 most dangerous hitters in baseball today?

Let’s find out.

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The voice would sometimes be hushed, even barely over a whisper. But there was no discounting its sincerity, or its candor.

The slew of microphones would be jabbed into the face of the speaker, and even inches away from his mouth, the words were difficult to pick up.

They were the E.F. Hutton of athletes in Detroit. You remember the commercials.

“When E.F. Hutton talks…people listen,” was the tag line, after the scene played out of a person in a crowded place explaining what their broker E.F. Hutton had to say about a particular issue. Everyone around would stop, dead in their tracks, to hear what E.F. Hutton had to say.

Such it was with Isiah Thomas of the Pistons and Steve Yzerman of the Red Wings.

These were the spokespersons for their respective teams, without question. They were both the captains—also without question. No sound bite was truly representative of the pulse of the team unless it came from Thomas, the brilliant point guard, or Yzerman, the gifted center man. Everyone else’s words were supportive; Thomas and Yzerman’s were the lead.

Neither was loud. In fact, both spoke very softly as a rule. But the words were measured, carefully thought out. The player would sometimes pause and the media, so wise to the speaker’s ways, didn’t dare tread on the temporary silence.

Sometimes the expressions on the faces would be pensive, even funereal. Other times, there would be a smirk and an implied wink. In Thomas’s case, there was often a wide grin, followed by hearty laughter. The media laughed with him.

Yzerman, for his part, had a dry sense of humor—self-effacing at times. Sometimes the joke would go above the media’s heads.

If you wanted to know the real deal about the Pistons and the Red Wings, you listened to what Isiah Thomas and Steve Yzerman had to say.

The peaks of their careers in Detroit didn’t overlap, really. Thomas won championships in 1989 and 1990—some seven years before Yzerman first raised the Stanley Cup for the Red Wings. Thomas had been retired for over three years by that time.

But their playing time in Detroit certainly ran concurrent from 1983 (when Yzerman was drafted and debuted as an 18 year-old) until Thomas’s 1994 retirement. For 11 years, the two functioned at the same time as their team’s “go-to” guys for the press.

Playoff disappointed haunted both athletes. Thomas made “the pass” in 1987 that helped the Boston Celtics overcome the Pistons in the conference finals. He experienced a seven-game, gut-wrenching loss to the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals in 1988.

Yzerman had to explain away the dreadful first-round loss to the three-year-old San Jose Sharks in 1994, and the stunning four-game sweep at the hands of the New Jersey Devils in the 1995 Cup Finals.

Neither man hid from the cameras and the microphones and audio recorders. There were no long showers, no ducking out the back exit. Both spoke to the media like men, answering all the questions, even when their heart was broken.

Isiah Thomas and Steve Yzerman—two of the most introspective, honest and forthright men to wear Detroit sports colors. Ever.

Octavio Dotel pitches for today’s Tigers. He’s a baseball vagabond; the Tigers are his 13th team, a major league record. His whole career has been lived out of a suitcase. Needless to say, he’s been around a lot of clubhouses, played with a lot of teammates, been guided by a lot of managers. He won a World Series with the 2011 Cardinals.

Dotel made a ripple out of spring training last week when it was learned that he told Yahoo! Sports that he didn’t think Tigers superstar Miguel Cabrera was a leader.

Apparently Dotel had suggested team meetings after some playoff losses last season and was rebuffed by Cabrera.

“You have to step up and say something,” Dotel told Yahoo!. “Miggy’s more about his game. I don’t see him as a leader. He didn’t give me that support. So I didn’t try no more.”

I’ve never been a believer in team meetings, especially in baseball. Seems whenever a team has one—usually to break a losing streak—it gets its rear end kicked all over the field right after.

Dotel backed off from the comments and apologized to Cabrera.

But the value of team meetings aside, Dotel’s comments about Cabrera ring true, but with a caveat.

Where Isiah Thomas and Steve Yzerman were the unquestioned leaders of their teams, the Tigers don’t really have that person—that designee to provide the State of the Tigers on a daily basis.

It’s also unfair to presume that person would be Cabrera.

He’s the Tigers best everyday player, by far—but that doesn’t mean he has to be the spokesperson.

There’s the language barrier for one. That doesn’t help.

Second, Cabrera just isn’t that kind of guy. His leadership is done between the white lines. We don’t listen to what Cabrera says—we listen to what he does.

It’s why I have been, at times, among Cabrera’s harshest critics.

In recent years I have expressed concern over the lack of production from Cabrera when the Tigers have needed it the most. I have complained that his numbers came at the wrong times—that he rarely put the Tigers on his back and carried them, as all true superstars do from time to time.

As recently as midseason of 2011 did I voice these concerns.

Not anymore.

But Dotel is also right, in a roundabout way.

The Tigers don’t have a spokesperson who’s not named Jim Leyland.

Who’s the “go to” guy?

Justin Verlander? He’s a pitcher. No one who takes the field once every five days can be the spokesperson—no matter how good he is on those days.

Austin Jackson? Too young yet.

Prince Fielder? Too happy-go-lucky.

Torii Hunter? Not here long enough.

Victor Martinez? He missed all of last season.

Alex Avila? Maybe, but not yet. As a catcher, he would be a prime candidate, but not yet.

Jhonny Peralta? Omar Infante? No and no.

This doesn’t infer that the Tigers can’t win the World Series without a spokesperson—without that “go-to” guy the media loves who has his finger on the pulse of the team.

But it’s clear the Tigers don’t have such a player on their roster.

Sometimes they come in handy. And sometimes they do help win championships.

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