in the past few years we have said goodbye to some of the greatest baseball players of this generation and for me the stars that maybe fall in love with the game one of in particular being Miguel Cabrera throughout his whole career he was one of the most feared hitters in baseball won multiple MVP awards and his combination of Power with 511 career home runs while also hitting for average with a career 306 figure is something that is not common in today's game with all this in mind he will undoubtedly be a first ballot Hall of
Famer and in today's video I want to go over one of his often overlooked accomplishments because it's something we hadn't seen since 1967 and probably won't see again for quite a while Cabrera hails from Venezuela and at the age of just 16 years old signed as an amateur free agent with the at the time Florida Marlin he quickly Rose to the ranks of the minor leagues and started the 2003 season at daa where he went on to produce 42 extra base hits in 69 games and hit an incredible 365 average with an over 1,000 an
Ops catching the eye of Marlin's GM Larry bayfest and he was called up on June 20th to make his major league debut against the Tampa Bay Devil race and in quite storybook fashion he had a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 11th inning off of Al Levine from that point onwards he was a regular in the lineup and went on to produce 35 extra base hits knock in 62 runs and had an Ops just aach shy of 800 his added spark to the lineup helped Propel the Marlin to her 12th best in the
National League with a 35 and 39 record at the time to the third best and a spot in the division series against the Barry Bonds L San Francisco Giants during the series migy wasn't anything special going hitless in the first three games but in game four he went four for five with two doubles and three RBIs in the series clinching win then in the NLCS he broke out in the first game of the series he took part in a three Homer inning for the Marlins to help them come back from 4 nothing down to a
game one 9 to8 and in the next few games he continued to hit with the bat posting multi-hit games in game two and three and had a one for four effort in game four but they lost all three of these games and were down 3 to one in the series however thanks to a complete game shut out from Josh Becket they were alive for game six where a timely hitting and once again solid pitching saw them take the series to the seventh game this is where we saw Miggy shine hitting cleanup he took carry wood
deep in the first inning to put the Marlins Up 3 nothing before they even had the chance to step up to the plate later on now down 5 to four he hit an RBI ground out to put them level at the end of the night he was one for five but with his Homer and ground out he knocked in four of the Marlins nine runs and helped them come back from a 3-1 deficit an extremely difficult feat to overcome now in the World Series he didn't go on to perform in the same way but he
did have one memorable moment in game four down two games to one migy came up to the pl against Roger Clemens a man who at the time was double his age but but he got the best of him and sent the seventh pitch of the at bat into the stands to open the scoring for the Marlins who went on to win the game in 11 Innings his Homer sparked the three-game winning streak the Marlins went on to win the series and their second world championship in Seven Seasons capping off an extremely impressive rookie campaign for
the young Venezuelan and in the Years following while the Marlins didn't remain competitive he went on to become one of the game's most feared players always topping 100 runs and RBI around 30 homers a 315 B average and in over 900 Ops between 2004 and 2007 but for the small Market Club Miami were and well still are they couldn't keep him and following the 2007 season he was traded to the Detroit Tigers who were coming off a season in which they took a massive step back from their World Series appearance in 2006 and while Mickey
didn't help the targets return to the playoffs until 2011 he continued his upper trajectory as one of the game's best hitters between 2008 and 2011 he he had the time set his career highs for homers at 37 RBI with 127 and managed to top 1,000 Ops in back-to-back seasons in 2010 and 11 at the time it was pretty safe to assume that these two years would not be topped but he topped them and as mentioned he accomplished what no one had done since Carl yky did so in 1967 that is when the offensive Triple Crown
this feat is done by Leading the league in batting average home runs and runs batted in migy did this by narly beating out Josh Hamilton by one for homers and it could have very well gone either way on September 28th just five games left in the season he was sitting on 42 homers and Hamilton at 43 but with a three-run homer off of Alex brnette on the 29th and another one against the Royals on October 1st he overtook Hamilton for the lead with just a couple games left and that's exactly how the line finished with
Hamilton going homerless to end the season next up Mickey again beat Hamilton this time for rbi's edging him out by a comfortable 11 runs and finally he beat out Mike Trout for the lead in average but this too could have gone either way entering October trout actually had the lead in this category with a 336 average compared to Mickey's 329 but in the final month he overtook him thanks to his solid September and beat trout by just 04 for the lead in average this season by mcky not only saw him accomplish a feat that hadn't
been done since the late 1960s but he also took home the MVP award beating out rookie sensation Mike Trout this accomplishment is truly once in a generation while there have been some players that have come close to joining him on this exclusive list like Vladimir grow Jr in 2021 and Paul Goldman in 2022 it still seems farfetch to think anyone will do it in the next few years because as a game shifts more and more to power hitters posting lower averages these days it may take another 60 years for a new addition to be made
to this club and as I said at the beginning of the video Miguel Cabrero was one of the players I grew up watching and to now see him retire from the MLB is going to make the league feel a lot different to not only myself but I bet to you too so as we welcome the new faces in the game and say goodbye to the old I just want to say thank you McKey for all the good times over the years all right that wraps it up for this video if you made it all the
way to the end then make sure to hit the like button and subscribe for more awesome baseball content just like this and I will see you in the next one
