Cooperstown Company

We all know the slash line (BA/OBP/SLG), and we may recall that at the end of the 2012 season, Miguel Cabrera's was .330/.393/.606. He was the 17th player to win the batting Triple Crown with 44 HR and 139 RBI. We all realize that this year he is having an even better season. A way better season. As this is being written, Cabrera is hitting .360 with 43 HR (he literally just hit #43) and 130 RBI, with an incredible slash line of .360/.449/.689 (each the best in MLB)... and there are still 31 games left in the season, or about 140 more at-bats.  He is 1st in MLB in batting avg. by 25 points, 1st in RBI by 10, and he is trailing Chris Davis by only 3 HRs now. I predict that he catches Davis by the end of next week.

One less talked-about statistic is that Cabrera has reached base in all but 5 of his 122 games played this season. In 1985, Wade Boggs reached base in all but 9 games, making it 152 games reaching base safely. If Cabrera can continue to play through his hip/abdomen injuries, he has a chance to reach base safely in 153 games, eclipsing the likes of Rogers Hornsby (135 games reached safely in 1922), Chuck Klien (135 in 1930), Ichiro (141 in 2001) and Jeter (148 in 1999). After everything he's done, I would never bet against him.

If Cabrera wins the Triple Crown, he will likely win the "major league" Triple Crown, becoming just the sixth player in history to do so, joining Ty Cobb (1909), Hornsby (1925), Lou Gehrig (1934), Ted Williams (1942), and Mickey Mantle (1956). That's good company to keep.

Major League Triple Crown winners + Miguel Cabrera (so far):

	BA	HR	RBI
Cobb. 1909	.377	9	107
Hornsby, 1925	.403	39	143
Gehrig, 1934	.363	49	165
Williams, 1942	.356	36	157
Mantle, 1956	.353	52	130
Cabrera, 2013	.360	43	130