Miguel Cabrera's Triple Crown

Re:  Miguel Cabrera's Triple Crown

A feat more rare than a perfect game occurred today in Detroit's last game of the season.  Miguel Cabrera reached one of the most difficult pinnacles in baseball, finishing the season with the highest batting average, the most RBI's and the most home runs of anyone in the league.  The last time this was accomplished was in 1967.

But in a way, this feat was more spectacular than what happened in 1967.  That was the year that Carl Yastrzemski pulled off the Triple Crown.  But Carl won by TYING in the category of most home runs.  In other words, nobody had MORE than him, but he wasn't alone at the top.  In fact, the last Triple Crown winner that stood alone at the top of all three categories was Frank Robinson, who won the title in 1966.

Since 1973, when the designated hitter rule came into force in the American League, winning the Triple Crown has become more difficult, in my opinion.  Why?  Because there is no reason to remove an effective pitcher from the game simply to try to get a better hitter into the offensive lineup.

Cabrera's feat was partially engineered by the keen eye and mind of the Tiger's manager.  With one eye on the statistics of the other players who mathematically had a chance to catch Cabrera, it was determined that a "worst case" scenario might be for the person in second place in the batting average race to have a perfect night at the plate.  If that happened, Cabrera would have to do no worse than 0-for-2 to maintain his lead.

With that in mind, Cabrera was allowed to enter the game.  The managers knew that if he did well, they could leave him in; but if he was having an off day, they could remove him after two, unsuccessful appearances at the plate without jeopardizing his Triple Crown title.  And that's just what they did ... Cabrera went 0-for-2 before being removed in the fourth inning.  Meanwhile, his closest rival went 2-for-3, falling just short of catching Cabrera for best batting average.

This feat is amazing and nothing will detract from Cabrera's win.  But, I can't help thinking back to the 2010 season when a Tiger pitcher threw a perfect game - only to have that feat negated by a bad call by the umpire on what would have been the last out of the game.  The umpire called a runner safe (the replay clearly showed the runner was out), thus spoiling the perfect game opportunity.  While that game will never go down in history as a perfect game, at least the umpire had the decency to apologize to the pitcher after the game for making his grave mistake.