For Detroit Tigers fans, it was the tweet heard 'round the world, courtesy of Miguel Cabrera:
OK, that's a slight exaggeration. But the news, and accompanying photographic evidence, that the two-time American League MVP is progressing in his recovery from right ankle surgery should ease some nerves in the Motor City.
On Jan. 9, Tigers head athletic trainer Kevin Rand told Fox Sports Detroit's Dana Wakiji that Cabrera wouldn't be out of the boot "until early February."
"Hopefully he'll put everything behind him and move forward again," Rand said at the time. "At this point, it's too early to speculate. Until he's able to do full weight-bearing work, it's too early to tell what we're going to have."
Cabrera shedding the boot ahead of schedule is a positive development. But it doesn't erase the doubts Rand highlighted or definitively answer the question on every Tigers fan's mind: Will Cabrera ever be the hitter he once was?
We're not talking ancient history here. In 2012, Cabrera won the Triple Crown, hitting .330 with 44 home runs and 139 RBI.
He followed that up with an even better 2013 campaign, posting an MLB-best .348/.442/.636 slash line and career-best 7.5 WAR.
Last season, Detroit's offensive cornerstone took a dip. It's not as if the bottom fell out—Cabrera's .313/.371/.524 slash line and 25 home runs look plenty palatable in a vacuum—but the decline was noticeable.
And it was explainable. In addition to bone spurs in his ankle, Cabrera was dealing with a stress fracture. Still, he earned AL Player of the Month honors in September and helped guide Detroit to a division title.
The Tigers now hope that he'll bounce back completely and re-establish himself as one of the game's pre-eminent sluggers.
But (could you sense there was a "but" coming?) there are red flags.
Cabrera is entering his age-32 season, not necessarily a time when every star's talents erode but certainly the downhill side of a typical career arc.
in addition, he'll need to log his share of innings in the field to accommodate 36-year-old Victor Martinez, another aging DH/first baseman who the Tigers re-signed for four years and $68 million in November.
It'd be foolish to count Cabrera out. He was dominant so recently that it's hard to imagine anything less than greatness from the man The New York Times' Mark Leibovich once dubbed "the hero of the post-steroid era."
Yet decline is inevitable, even for the best. As the Tigers prepare to battle the AL champion Kansas City Royals and the reloaded Chicago White Sox in the AL Central, can they count on Miggy to be the Miggy of old?
The key is to temper playing time (along with expectations), which Jamie Samuelsen of the Detroit Free Press recently argued:
[Manager Brad] Ausmus and Cabrera need to sit down with [general manager] Dave Dombrowski and team doctors and map out a plan for spring training and for the early part of the season. More important than that, they need to stick to it. The Tigers' lineup is formidable, but it clearly needs a healthy Cabrera in the middle of it to anchor things. If that means taking a day off here or there, then it needs to be done.
[...]
Cabrera is a superstar. Superstars tend to call their shots. Ausmus needn't be a dictator on this. But he has to carefully pick his spots so that Cabrera doesn't repeat 2013 and 2014 and limp to the finish line as opposed to 2012 when he sprinted to it en route to winning the Triple Crown.
The idea, then, should be quality over quantity, recognizing that Cabrera's days of playing 150-plus games—as he has in 10 of his 11 full big league seasons—may be over, but his contributions aren't.
Bottom line: Miggy may have shed his ankle boot, but the doubts will be harder to shake.
All statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference.
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