Not too long ago, it wasn't beyond reason to think 2015 would be the year Miguel Cabrera finally slipped from the ranks of Major League Baseball's elite hitters.
But now? Yeah, now that notion comes off as crazy talk. Rather than a hitter in decline, Cabrera is looking much more like his vintage self.
Through 13 games, the 32-year-old Detroit Tigers slugger is hitting .400 with a 1.084 OPS, numbers reminiscent of the height of his power from 2010 to 2013. And while these figures don't lead everyone else, FanGraphs puts Cabrera among the game's top 10 hitters in adjusted offense.
Obviously, it's early. We're talking a sample size containing two weeks of baseball and only 56 plate appearances, so go ahead and hum the small sample size song if you must. It's appropriate.
But we're not going to stop this conversation right there. In light of all that's recently gone on with Cabrera, his early hot hitting is just too encouraging to ignore.
Let's hop in the TARDIS and go back to the end of 2013. That's when another brilliant season by Cabrera suddenly hit a wall, as he was overcome by injuries and just wasn't the same hitter down the stretch or in the postseason. Then came core muscle surgery in the offseason, which figured to make it difficult for him to bounce back in 2014.
Sure enough, he didn't. Cabrera freely admitted at the All-Star break to not feeling 100 percent healthy, and it ultimately showed in his numbers. Though he finished among the game's top hitters, he had the lowest full-season home run total of his career, and his OPS dropped 142 points from his 2012-2013 OPS. He then had another major surgery in the offseason, this time on his right ankle.
None of this was a good look on a guy getting further past the danger zone that is the age of 30. Hence why a healthy dose of skepticism about Cabrera's 2015 season was warranted.
So much for that. Because what's important now is not only that Cabrera is producing like his vintage self but also that he legitimately looks like his vintage self.
To get at the heart of what's going on with Cabrera, let's go back to the utter domination of a three-game series against the Cleveland Indians that's pictured above.
In that series, Cabrera wrecked Cleveland pitching to the tune of a .786 average and a 2.086 OPS. When asked about what was working for him, he gave a typical man-of-few-words answer.
"I feel very good," he told MLB.com's Jason Beck and Jordan Bastian. "I feel like I'm seeing the ball very good, try to get my pitches and try to put a good swing on the ball."
There's admittedly not much to be gleaned here. But at the least, it was nice to hear Cabrera say he's feeling good. There's also something to him getting his pitches, as his increased walk rate and decreased strikeout rate can vouch that he's having better at-bats than he was in 2014.
But if there's something that's really worth reading into, it's Cabrera saying he's putting good swings on the ball. He didn't elaborate on what he meant by that, but Shawn Windsor of the Detroit Free Press summed up the results of the eye test.
"His at-bats said plenty: his balanced stance, his fluid hip turn, his fearlessness as he planted his (surgically repaired) foot, his unmistakable torque, the result of letting it fly without worry of pain in the groin," Windsor wrote.
In so many words, Windsor saw a hitter who, for the first time in a long time, finally looked healthy.
And with the help of some moving pictures, we can too.
For starters, this is what a typical Cabrera swing looked like early in 2014:
There's no frowning on the result of that swing, but the swing itself didn't look pretty. Most notably, you can see some sluggish hip rotation and bat speed and then a two-handed follow-through noticeably less explosive than Cabrera's typical one-handed follow-through.
Keep all this in mind while you watch this swing:
Here, you can see everything Windsor noted in action: the sturdy back foot, the explosive hip rotation and bat speed, and the vintage one-handed follow-through. With all that going on, it's no surprise that the contact being made here is much louder than the contact in the above video.
And if we're going to get into the benefits of Cabrera regaining his vintage swing, that's as good a place as any to start.
According to Mark Simon of ESPN Stats & Info, Cabrera actually had one of the best hard-hit rates among qualified hitters last year at 23.3 percent. But early in 2015, he's doing even better than that at a rate of 25.5 percent, putting him near the top of the early leaderboard:
Granted, it sure didn't hurt that Cabrera got two hanging changeups to tee off on in that game against the Indians. He could have (and probably would have) done that even with the swing he had in 2014.
But one thing that swing wasn't so good for was catching up to the heat. And so far this season, that trend is looking like ancient history.
As Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs pointed out, pitchers attempted to exploit Cabrera's diminished state early last season by challenging him with an increased number of fastballs in the strike zone. And it worked. According to Baseball Savant, Cabrera hit just .300 against in-zone heat last April. At year's end, his .372 against in-zone heat was his worst mark since 2008.
But so far this year? As of the start of play Monday, Cabrera was hitting a whopping .684 against in-zone fastballs. And though this is with only two extra-base hits, it's still confirmation that challenging him with fastballs in the zone is no longer a sound strategy.
Neither is giving Cabrera anything he can pull. He quietly struggled to hit for his usual power to his pull side in 2014, but here are some figures that can show that trend appears to have bitten the dust:
And so, it's to the checklist we go. So far in 2015, we have a Miguel Cabrera who's producing like Miguel Cabrera, swinging like Miguel Cabrera, punishing the ball like Miguel Cabrera, handling fastballs like Miguel Cabrera and using left field like Miguel Cabrera.
Sounds like he's all the way back, right? Sure does.
But there's always a catch. And in this case, there are a couple.
As nice as it is to see Cabrera killing the ball to left field, he's not using the opposite field nearly as well as he usually does. Also, he's been vulnerable against breaking balls. And despite his impressive hard-hit rate, his line-drive rate (24.8 to 20.5) and, according to Baseball Heat Maps, average fly-ball distance (304.9 to 291.7) are both down.
So no, the Cabrera we've seen so far in 2015 isn't quite a perfect representation of the Cabrera who wreaked havoc on opposing pitchers between 2010 and 2013. He'll need to figure things out if he wants to be that guy again.
But for now, it's good enough that Cabrera is looking more like himself now than he was this time last year. And though noting as much doesn't necessarily overrule the whole small sample size thing, it can be noted that what we're seeing is Cabrera picking up where he left off.
Cabrera didn't have his best season in 2014, but you never would have known it had you only tuned in to watch him at the end of the year. He had a 1.118 OPS and eight homers in September, and he OPS'd 1.144 with another homer in the postseason.
He looked a lot then like he does now. His swing was night and day from where it had been earlier in the year, he hit .500 against in-zone fastballs and he was assaulting left field with extra-base hits.
Even after a hot finish like that, you could still fear that Cabrera's age and ankle surgery—which, again, was his second major operation in 12 months—would combine to slow him down out of the gate and beyond in 2015. Instead, he hasn't skipped a beat.
The decline of Miguel Cabrera is going to come eventually. And when it does, nobody is going to enjoy it.
But it doesn't look like we have to worry about that right now. Instead, let's leave the worrying to opposing pitchers and allow ourselves to delight in watching an all-time great hitter continue to do his thing.
Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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