Miguel Cabrera: On the Decline? (By: Matthew Lessard)

During his 12 year career, Miguel Cabrera has established himself as one of the games premier hitters and consummate professionals.  His Triple Crown performance back in 2012 was the first of its kind since Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski accomplished the feat back in 1967.  Along with the triple crown, Cabrera has amassed many other laudable accomplishments during his Major League career.  These honors include, 9 All-Star Game Appearances, 5 Silver Sluggers, and 2 league MVPs.  However, upon statistical analysis for this current season, I noticed a decline in the majority of offensive categories for the heralded hitter.  Thus, I dedicate this next post to discussing the possibility of Miguel Cabrera beginning his career decline.

I know what the majority of you may be thinking right now, that I am insane for making this conjecture.  For the 31 year-old slugger, just started at first base for the American League during the 2014 All Star game.  He also leads the league with 81 RBIs thus far in this 2014 MLB campaign.  However, I will provide analysis to strengthen my argument and hopefully sway some of the skeptics.     I personally believe that Cabrera should not have been the starter for the American League this year during the All-Star Game.  Also, upon my statistical analysis, I came to the conclusion that Miguel Cabrera only ranks fifth in my 2014 MLB First Baseman Power Rankings.

Let me now begin with the analysis.  The two main statistics, which I considered for the majority of the analysis were Wins Above Replacement (WAR) and my own statistical creation, Individual Offensive Rating (IOR).  If you are unsure of what exactly either of these statistics are, please reference my earlier posts, where they are explained.  The best piece to reference would be The 2014 MLB All-Star Game (Part 2): A Popularity Contest?.  Not only does this piece contain explications of these statistics, but also it argues and proves why Miguel Cabrera was elected to start the ASG due to popularity, not performance.

Name	IOR	WAR
Alex Avila*	0.409	0.9
Miguel Cabrera	0.464	3.1
Ian Kinsler	0.391	3.6
Andrew Romine#	0.338	-0.1
Nick Castellanos	0.362	-1
Rajai Davis	0.478	1
Austin Jackson	0.403	1.9
Torii Hunter	0.367	-0.7
Victor Martinez#	0.545	2.5
J.D. Martinez	0.450	2.4
Eugenio Suarez	0.429	0.2
Don Kelly*	0.415	-0.3
Bryan Holaday	0.341	-0.2

First, consider Cabrera in comparison with his position player teammates on the Detroit Tigers.  Cabrera leads the team in neither IOR, nor WAR.  This shows me that in terms of the Tigers line-up, Cabrera is neither the best individual offensive performer, nor the most valuable player this year.  Cabrera ranks second in WAR, only behind Ian Kinsler.  However, if Victor Martinez did not primarily play Designated Hitter, he probably would have a greater WAR than Miguel Cabrera.  V-Mart is hands down the Tigers best individual offensive performer this year, with an IOR of .545, 0.081 points greater than Cabrera's.  Sure Cabrera leads the league in RBIs, however, that is a stat that is heavily dependent upon the performance of the other players in the lineup.  With the exception of a home run, a hitter can only record an RBI if one of his teammates is on base.

I understand that the Tigers are in fact one of the best teams in baseball, so I will now compare Cabrera to the other first basemen in Major League Baseball.  First, I would like to put down my MLB 2014 First Baseman Power Rankings, for the top 5 first basemen this year.  The list is as follows:

1) Paul Goldschmidt, Arizona Diamondbacks

2) Anthony Rizzo, Chicago Cubs

3) Edwin Encarnacion, Toronto Blue Jays

4) Jose Abreu, Chicago White Sox

5) Miguel Cabrera, Detroit Tigers

As you can see in the preceding list, Miguel Cabrera is only ranked fifth.  To statistically validate these rankings, I will provide a chart similar to the one above, which I made for the Tigers.  This list is composed of 24 of the primary First Basemen in the MLB.

Name	IOR	WAR
Albert Pujols	0.438	2.4
Freddie Freeman*	0.476	2
Eric Hosmer*	0.373	0.3
James Loney*	0.406	0.6
Paul Goldschmidt	0.560	4.4
Miguel Cabrera	0.464	3.1
Adrian Gonzalez*	0.421	1.6
Ryan Howard*	0.409	-0.3
Anthony Rizzo*	0.549	3.4
Jose Abreu	0.486	3.1
Brandon Moss*	0.472	3
Matt Adams*	0.397	2.6
Justin Morneau*	0.411	1.8
Edwin Encarnacion	0.518	3.1
Chris Davis*	0.445	1.3
Lucas Duda*	0.494	2.3
Adam LaRoche*	0.507	1.7
Joe Mauer*	0.416	0.7
Mike Napoli	0.517	2.3
Lonnie Chisenhall*	0.469	1.7
Mark Teixeira#	0.462	1.1
Ike Davis*	0.458	-0.1
Justin Smoak#	0.339	-0.5
Joey Votto*	0.523	1.9

Considering the statistics above, Miguel Cabrera once again does not top either category.  In fact, for IOR, Cabrera ranks 12th and for WAR, he is tied for 3rd.  With the performed analysis, I can say that as of this day, for the 2014 season, Miguel Cabrera is neither the best First Baseman nor hitter in the game.  I believe that either Jose Abreu or Edwin Encarnacion should have started the All-Star Game instead of Cabrera.

In terms of Cabrera being in a career decline, it would appear to be so.  However, with Cabrera being the high caliber player that he is, it would not surprise me to see him rebound either in this year or the next.  To emphasize his decline, I now will provide the WAR and IOR for Cabrera from the 2012 and 2013 seasons.

Year	IOR	WAR
2012	0.545	7.2
2013	0.638	7.5

Cabreras WAR and IOR were significantly higher in the previous two seasons.  I comprehend the fact that the season is only a little over half way done, however his statistics thus far are significantly smaller.  To reiterate, for the 2014 season, Cabrera has a WAR of 3.1 and IOR of just 0.464.