Cabrera’s injury bad for Tigers
This is bad. It could be the worst thing.
This is one of those things you say in spring training that could make the Detroit Tigers a really bad major-league baseball team, 100-plus losses, along with Michael Fulmer getting hurt again and well, there’s not really a No. 3.
Miguel Cabrera is injured and he will not play again this season. It is as bad as it sounds. It’s mid-June. For however many losses the Tigers have had with Cabrera — the team is 16-22 in games he has played this season — at least they would have had the best hitter of this generation taking at least three at-bats a night. And for the optimistic crowd: They’ve played .500 baseball without him — what could they do with a healthy Cabrera?
But now, he is out for the year with an injury at age 35, at a point when his durability was most questioned and he’s still owed $154 million after this season and until 2023. Before you ask, no, there is not a trade market for such a player, not even Cabrera. His spring training was similar: He started slowly and gradually and with opposite-field power, showed himself to be at full health to begin the season. And when opening day arrived, he looked like the hitter we’ve come to know, knocking the ball around the field at high velocities. But since he made a fateful slip in Chicago during the second week of the season — tumbling to the dirt off first base on a hard-hit single — it has been an uphill battle. He’d return, and then again, two weeks later after a biceps spasm, but in his first game back, he left with a right hamstring strain after jogging to first base.
And now, after the latest diagnosis — one that will begin to erode the Tigers both offensively and especially defensively — there is more doubt than ever that Cabrera, as we knew him, will return.