Fantasy Reflections: Requiem for a Miggy

I’ve never been a fan of either franchise whose uniform he’s worn – in fact, I disliked him as a rookie for being a key cog for a team that beat out my preferred squad for a wild-card spot and then won it all – but over a decade-plus as one of the game’s elite talents eventually made me warm to Miguel Cabrera.

Before it became common for baby-faced players barely beyond their teenage years to take Major League Baseball by storm immediately, Cabrera forced the Marlins’ hand in promoting him on June 20, 2003 at the tender age of 20. He homered in his debut, hit .268/.325/.468 over 87 games, and helped the Fish secure their second championship in seven years. While he’s only been back to the World Series once (and lost it) since, that season stood as Cabrera’s worst performance by an order of magnitude until recently.

From 2004 – 16, Miggy may never have unequivocally been the best player in baseball, but he was almost always in the conversation. He earned the ire of analytically-inclined fans when voters awarded him a pair of Most Valuable Player awards that probably should have gone to Mike Trout, but it’s hard to get too twisted over a Triple Crown winner getting the nod for MVP. For fantasy purposes, before Trout came along, Cabrera was arguably the most reliable first-round stud in the game. He averaged .323/.402/.566, 33 HR, 99 R, and 115 RBI during those 13 seasons. Just as importantly, he averaged 155 games played and spent precisely zero days on the disabled list in each season outside of 2015.

To look at him was to know that latter fact couldn’t last. Cabrera’s preternatural talent as a hitter had little to do with his conditioning or level of athleticism; he moved from third base to first base in his age-25 season, moving back across the diamond for a couple of seasons when the Tigers signed Prince Fielder and banked on their pooled plate prowess outweighing the negative defensive considerations. Players with Miggy’s body type generally do not age well. Fielder, whose body betrayed him right into an early retirement, stands as a testament to that truism.

Cabrera missed 32 games in 2017, and when he did play he was a shell of his former self. His final line for the year (.249/.329/.399, 16 HR, 50 R, 60 RBI) placed him 50th among first basemen on the ESPN player rater and 52nd in Yahoo’s rankings. For the first time, fantasy owners who had invested in Miggy sorely regretted doing so, including yours truly.

In my home league, I’ve enjoyed a run of success that has resulted in championships every season since 2011. That doesn’t happen without some measure of good fortune, but the one through-line was Miggy – whether I could afford to keep him or had to outbid others for him in the draft, he was on my roster every single one of those victorious seasons. So despite his middling performance last year and the sizable return I received, it was emotionally tough to trade him at midseason. It also felt strange to let a rival nab him in the draft (I opted for Joey Votto as my 1B this time around in that league), though I did pony up in a couple of others.

Even if I had avoided Cabrera in drafts this spring, though, the news that he’ll miss the remainder of the season with a ruptured bicep tendon wouldn’t have been any less of a bummer. Miggy is still under contract for five more seasons, but he’s now played just 168 games in the last two years and will be 36 next April. The odds that we’ll ever see him even approach his prior heights are, to put it mildly, long.

This isn’t anything new, of course. We all know time is undefeated and everything eventually ends. And right now, I’d be willing to bet I’ll end up rolling the dice on Miggy again in 2019 in at least one league. We spent most of our time counseling you against emotional decisions, but after all he’s done for me as a fantasy owner, I’m happy to put a few bucks on the hope for one more good year in the sun. It’s the least I can do.

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