Need advice: Top three Tigers...

[Tiger337]

Cabrera was a great hitter, but not a "generational talent".  A generational talent is someone who dominates the game for a decade or more.  Pujols was a generational talent.  Trout was a generational talent.  Cabrera was Hall of Fame caliber, but not in their class. 

You keep saying opinion versus stats and then your opinion about Cabrera is all stats! He didn't get 600 home runs by the way.  He got 500.  Pujols got 700!

[Dtrain72]

Javy's the best player on the team as of today, change my mind

[gehringer_2]

5 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Cabrera was a great hitter, but not a "generational talent

You can argue that if he had stayed healthy longer, his talent level was high enough to have matched Pujols - especially if he had stayed fit enough to stay at 3B longer. So it's a similar semantics discussion as in the Wings forum. Fedorov was probably the absolutely most talented hockey player I ever watched, but he didn't achieve a career that matched the absolute abilities he possessed by a large margin. Cabrera was the whole package as a 3b, soft hands, good arm, and that bat. But for all he did achieve in his career, he still fell far short of what his absolute talent level promised. And that is true of many players, but to me Cabrera is a pretty striking example.

[Tenacious D]

Only Idaho Bert saw all of Cobb, Kaline and Miggy play, so I’ll defer to him.

[Tiger337]

17 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

You can argue that if he had stayed healthy longer, his talent level was high enough to have matched Pujols - especially if he had stayed fit enough to stay at 3B longer. So it's a similar semantics discussion as in the Wings forum. Fedorov was probably the absolutely most talented hockey player I ever watched, but he didn't achieve a career that matched the absolute abilities he possessed by a large margin. Cabrera was the whole package as a 3b, soft hands, good arm, and that bat. But for all he did achieve in his career, he still fell far short of what his absolute talent level promised. And that is true of many players, but to me Cabrera is a pretty striking example.

Through age 33, which is when Cabrera stopped hitting, he had an OPS+ of 155 with 70 WAR.  Pujols had a 165 OPS+ and 93 WAR through age 33.  Pujols was one of the best defensive first basemen during his prime.  Statistically, Cabrera was a below average defender most of his career.  Fans used to make excuses for him because they loved his hitting, but he was not a good defender especially when he was trying to play 3B.  He was adequate as a 1B.  Pujols was better than Cabrera.  Not staying fit is a poor excuse!     

Edited April 22 by Tiger337

[Tenacious D]

Just now, Tiger337 said:

Through age 33, which is when Cabrera stopped hitting, he had an OPS+ of 155 with 70 WAR.  Pujols had a 165 OPS+ and 93 WAR through age 33.  Pujols was one of the best defensive first basemen during his prime.  Cabrera was a below average defender most of his career.  Pujols was better than Cabrera.  Not staying fit is a poor excuse!     

Agree that Pujols was better (are we really arguing this?), but it’s also like comparing Rachel Welch to Ann Margaret.  And Miggy’s decline was mostly due to injuries and less about his conditioning, though they might be related.

[Dtrain72]

Javy, boom on base.  It's much better to give Javy flowers than it is to post memes of Harvy getting struck out by Sister Jean.

Edited April 22 by Dtrain72

[Dtrain72]

Wooooo! This is fun...gooo Javy goooo!

[Tiger337]

How did Baez get into the top three Tigers of all time thread???

[gehringer_2]

1 minute ago, Tiger337 said:

How did Baez get into the top three Tigers of all time thread???

Thread chaos will not be tolerated!

[Edman85]

I love playing the "guess the headshot" game on BR.

[buddha]

pujols being better than miggy doesnt mean miggy isnt a great player.  he stuck around too long and let himself go.

does miggy get a statue?  i think he does.  does verlander?  probably.

[Dtrain72]

22 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

How did Baez get into the top three Tigers of all time thread???

Lol, my bad...I was at work and slightly distracted and thought I was posting in the game thread, herpa-derp 😆

[buddha]

how is miggy not a generational hitter?  because he's not albert pujols?  that's a really small generation.

[Topliner1903]

10 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

 So it's a similar semantics discussion as in the Wings forum. Fedorov was probably the absolutely most talented hockey player I ever watched, but he didn't achieve a career that matched the absolute abilities he possessed by a large margin. 

More talented than Datsyuk?

[UCFKNIGHT]

All-time backup catchers: Dwight Lowry, Bill Fahey and Sal Butera. Dwight(R.I.P.)

[RedRamage]

14 hours ago, bobrob2004 said:

Don Kelly, Brandon Inge, and Shane Halter.  

Thread over. This is the winner right here.

[RedRamage]

12 hours ago, Dtrain72 said:

Javy's the best player on the team as of today, change my mind

If you're talking strictly position players and looking at their total career, you might actually be right.

[chasfh]

At his best Cabrera was at least the equal of Pujols as a hitter. Their top ten oWAR seasons:

• Miggy  9.1  7.9  7.7  7.0  6.8  5.6  5.4  5.2 5.2  5.2
• Pujols  8.6  7.9  7.9  7.5  7.1   6.8  6.7  6.1  6.0  5.7

Miggy’s outsized triple-Crown season was the best between the both of them, but beyond that, Pujols was consistently better.

Then, of course, there’s the glove. Pujol’s 2007 was the best defensive season at first base of all time, and by a wide margin (minimum 80% of games played at 1B). No contest.

[Tenacious D]

43 minutes ago, UCFKNIGHT said:

All-time backup catchers: Dwight Lowry, Bill Fahey and Sal Butera. Dwight(R.I.P.)

Duffy Dyer says, F%$& you!

[Sports_Freak]

14 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

Cabrera was a great hitter, but not a "generational talent".  A generational talent is someone who dominates the game for a decade or more.  Pujols was a generational talent.  Trout was a generational talent.  Cabrera was Hall of Fame caliber, but not in their class. 

You keep saying opinion versus stats and then your opinion about Cabrera is all stats! He didn't get 600 home runs by the way.  He got 500.  Pujols got 700!

You're right, I mistyped. 500 home runs for Miggy. I was surprised to see he had a better WAR (baseball reference):for his career than Greenberg. Miggy is/was an all-time great player. I'm sure his Tiger career, the last few years, hurt his cause a bit but he was still a great player. BTW...BR has Ty Cobb's WAR at 151...lmao...how is that even possible?

[gehringer_2]

3 hours ago, Topliner1903 said:

More talented than Datsyuk?

I would say yes. Pavel did have moves no-one else did, but the thing that separated Sergei was the combination of strength and speed. It was much harder to out-physical Sergei than Pavel. I think if you could have put Yzerman's competitive fire in Sergei's body you'd have consistently had the best player in the league instead once in a while. Though I'll admit, I think Pavel would probably be a more dominant player than he was playing in today's NHL, where there is a measure less physical intimidation than he had to face in his own era.

[chasfh]

2 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

Miggy is/was an all-time great player.

I guess by any objective metric, this is true. Miggy is firmly in the 99th percentile of all players. He has a Triple Crown and a ring. He has 3,000 hits, 500 HRs, and a .300 batting average—all the traditional benchmarks that constitute baseball greatness. And, barring anything horrific occurring in the meantime, he will make the Hall of Fame in five years on the first ballot with well over 90% of the vote.

That said, Miggy will not be considered an inner-circle Hall of Famer in the long run. Sure, he will be referred as such while the voting is going on, because he is alive and current and the people who will be talking about him on The Network know him personally and all that. Recency counts.

But ten or twenty or thirty years after that, Miggy will recede to the background of baseball consciousness, more or less in the same way Frank Thomas and Eddie Murray and Paul Molitor have. All great players in the 99th percentile, to be sure—but when you are talking about The Greatest Players in Baseball History, you have to name a whole lot of names before you get to theirs. And the same will be true of Miggy.

Miggy had a chance to be a true inner-circle Hall of Famer once, and to us, he is, because he was ours for a while, plus he's been gone for less than a year. But to the rest of the baseball world, he will be considered just another pretty good Hall of Famer. Nothing to be ashamed of, of course, but it will be an appropriate consideration for a guy who finished with a lower career bWAR than Dwight Evans, Craig Nettles, Robinson Cano, Kenny Lofton, and Bobby Grich—and, not for nothing, also lower than Frank Thomas, Eddie Murray, and Paul Molitor.

[Tenacious D]

Pre-injury(s), Miggy was on pace to be top 10 in many offensive categories.  He was a shell of himself at the end of his career, and unfortunately, many will remember him that way.  During his peak years in Detroit, he was probably the 2nd greatest player in Tiger history, after Cobb.

[chasfh]

Speaking of which: where is Miggy today? Is he actually living in Detroit and doing actual work for the Tigers as a special assistant to the president of baseball operations? Because I haven't heard boo about him since he hung out on the field in Lakeland for exactly one day on March 12.