Miguel Cabrera will return next year for his 21st and final MLB season, not that there was much of a doubt. Tigers new president of baseball operations Scott Harris made that clear in a recent interview with WJR when he said, "It is not time to move on from Miguel Cabrera."
"Miggy is one of the best Tigers in the history of this organization," Harris said. "He has earned that."
Cabrera has also earned $31 million per year from the Tigers for the last seven seasons. He'll earn $32 million in the final year of his $248 million contract. The guaranteed money is a sunk cost for the Tigers, who theoretically could have parted ways with Cabrera this offseason to make room on the roster for younger, more productive hitters.
So why bring him back?
"He’s earned our respect," A.J. Hinch said Tuesday on the Stoney & Jansen Show.
And to the Tigers, the alternative -- kicking a franchise icon to the curb in the last lap of his Hall of Fame career -- isn't worth it.
"I think in today’s world where we come up with these theories on what we should do, if you put yourself in the space of moving on from someone who’s going to have a statue in center field and a number retired and a Hall of Fame plaque, the criticism then would be that we’ve ruined a legacy," said Hinch.
The decision to keep Cabrera was unanimous throughout the organization, Hinch said. It was agreed upon by everyone from Harris to Hinch to owner Chris Ilitch.
"And quite honestly, I think Scott Harris deserved to get to know Miguel before, ‘Hey, nice to meet you and we’re going to do this with you.' You have to develop a relationship before we move into whatever’s next for Miguel," Hinch said.
Whatever's next is now mostly up to Hinch. For as well as Cabrera hit the ball in the first half of last season -- he carried a near .300 average into the All-Star Game -- he cannot maintain a prominent role in Detroit's lineup next season. The Tigers cannot dedicate another 400-plus middle-of-the-order plate appearances to a one-legged hitter who finished with one of the worst slugging percentages in the majors.
"There’s definitely a balance that we need to find on what can we get from Miguel, where is he at physically, where can he can contribute? Then it’s up to us to make those decisions harder based on the personnel that we have," said Hinch. "When I first met with Miguel when I got the job, I told him that he’s going to hit lower in the order. We have to build a team that has a middle of the order than can supply the damage that we need in order to justify that, just from a team standpoint alone."
Cabrera, who turns 40 next April, has been plagued by a chronically-damaged right knee for the last several seasons. There is no fixing it at this point, just managing the pain. It flared up this summer, which is partly why hit hit .171 after the All-Star Break. He finished the year hitting .254 with a .622 OPS.
"Miguel doesn’t want to play the way he did in the middle of the season, but nobody was clamoring for him to not be part of the organization in the first half when he made the All-Star team. Part of it was legacy, but we remember that he was playing pretty well," said Hinch. "Maybe not the 20-homer, 30-homer, 40-homer guy, but we’re going to try to squeeze some more impact out of him and make decisions along the way that are associated with his performance."
And speaking of the middle of the lineup for the Tigers, Hinch had this to say about the offense moving forward:
"We need to control the strike zone. When you’re facing elite pitching, the knowledge of the strike zone and choosing what we swing at is paramount. And we just have too many guys that have too big of chase rates and too big of swing-and-miss rates. That combo, when you play against the good teams or you play over 162, is hard to sustain offensive performance. That, and our athleticism."
The Tigers had six of the 30 worst hitters in the American League this season (min. 300 plate appearances) in chase rate: Javier Baez, Victor Reyes, Willi Castro, Harold Castro, Jonathan Schoop and Eric Haase. And five of the 30 worst AL hitters in whiff rate: the aforementioned six minus Harold Castro. Only Baez and Schoop are currently under contract for next season.
As a team, the Tigers had the worst strikeout-to-walk ratio in the majors. They also had the fewest homers and the third fewest stolen bases. Hinch said they'll address their flaws this winter by adding "different personnel," in search of more control of the strike zone, more power and more speed.
"Not all of them are necessarily going to be household names with these monster contracts and these superstar qualities," he said. "Going into the season, who knew that Cleveland was going to be able to put together a team of relative non-stars after moving on from Francisco Lindor and be a pretty competent offense? There’s multiple ways to build it.
"So we have to go behind the curtain and figure it out, but if we don’t control the strike zone then we’re not going to be consistent offensively."
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