Miguel Cabrera's Back-to-Back MVP Seasons Were the Same, But Very Different
I love this kind of stuff.
If you look at a player’s Baseball-Reference page long enough, you’re bound to find interesting tidbits about their career. You already know I love this kind of stuff because of my favorite Ken Griffey Jr. stat ever.
But today, I want to talk about Miguel Cabrera’s back-to-back AL MVP campaigns from 2012-13. Both season-long performances look quite similar when compared to one another on the surface, but he arrived at those numbers in very different ways.
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The Similarities in Miggy’s 2012 and 2013 MVP Seasons
A lot of things were the same from 2012-13 for Cabrera. He not only beat out Mike Trout for the AL MVP Award in both years, but he also won two Silver Sluggers and was selected to two All-Star Games.
Here’s a side-by-side look at a few of Miggy’s season-long stats:
2012: .330/.393/.606 line with 44 home runs, 139 RBI, 109 runs scored and 205 hits
2013: .348/.442/.636 line with 44 home runs, 137 RBI, 103 runs scored and 193 hits
Cabrera won the Triple Crown in 2012 while accumulating 7.1 bWAR. He didn’t lead the league in homers or RBI the following year but took home another batting title while being worth 7.5 bWAR.
How Those Performances Differed From One Another
One of the biggest differences in his performances between both years was the number of doubles he hit. Cabrera hit 40 two-baggers in ‘12 and 26 in ‘13. But the difference I want to zero in on is how he reached his homer totals.
This is MLB Daily Dingers, ya know. I have to talk about the homers.
In 2012, Miggy hit 18 homers before the All-Star break, followed by 26 in the second half. But in 2013, those numbers flipped — he hit 30 in the first half and 14 after the midsummer classic.
The venues in which he slugged these homers also changed drastically between each year. In 2012, he slugged 28 homers at Comerica Park in Detroit and 16 on the road. But in 2013, only 17 homers came at Comerica, while the other 27 occurred on the road.
Milestone Miguel Cabrera Home Runs
Miggy is the most recent hitter to enter the 500-homer club. He finished his soon-to-be Hall of Fame career with 511 taters, the same as Mel Ott. We should’ve known he was destined for greatness after he slugged his first big-league homer since it was a walk-off dinger for the Florida Marlins.
It happened on June 20, 2023:
Want to see more milestone homers from Cabrera? Then head over to the blog, I’ve got you covered.