If he's being totally honest, Miguel Cabrera isn't sure. Mounting injuries and declining numbers are the seeds of doubt, to say nothing of the Big Man's age. The uncertainty in his heart flickers in his voice when he ponders whether or not he can be the hitter he once was.
"I want to be. I want to be back, because when you're hurt and you don't play you're not going to put up numbers," Cabrera said on Thursday as the Tigers kicked off their winter caravan. "But right now I feel healthy. I can say I'm going to go out there every day and play hard and try to put up some numbers and see what happens at the end of the season."
Since arriving in Detroit, never has Cabrera's place in the game been so murky. He's coming off a season that ended after 38 games due to a torn biceps that required surgery, and the season before that, similarly hampered by injury, he put up the worst numbers of his career. He'll turn 36 in April. The batting title he won in 2015 feels buried in the past.
Somewhere beneath that, like captives stuck in a cave, are the back-to-back MVP awards...the Triple Crown...and, most gravely, Cabrera's mantle as the best hitter in baseball.
It's a title he's unlikely to recover. His body is too far gone. As for the natural talent, plenty remains. Through hands that can still flash through the zone and mechanics as pure as anyone's in the game, Cabrera remains a threat at the dish. At the time of his injury last June, he was hitting .299 with an .843 OPS. He had the highest hard-contact rate of his career.
What was missing in 2018 -- and it's been missing longer than that -- is the effortless stroke on which he's built his Hall-of-Fame career, the one that sends balls into the gap and over the fence in right-center field. Cabrera intends to find it this season.
"I want to go back to the opposite way, because the last two years I tried to pull a lot of balls to left field. I want to be back in my zone. Try to let the ball go deep and don't try to swing too hard," Cabrera said.
In that 2012 Triple Crown season, Cabrera hit the ball the other way 28.5 percent of the time and pulled it about 36 percent, according to fangraphs. His pull rate spiked to about 42 percent and his opposite-field rate slipped to 26 percent last season. It was the consequence, years in the making, of swinging without a base, of being reduced to an upper-body hitter, of sacrificing his fundamentals to keep his name in the lineup.
To halt his decline in 2019, Cabrera will have to channel that vintage swing. On this matter, the 11-time All-Star speaks with more confidence.
"I feel it right now," he said. "I hit this offseason, I'm feeling strong enough. I'm going to keep working hard and hopefully I can hit more than 30 home runs this year."
It's a lofty goal, all things considered. Cabrera's eclipsed 30 home runs just once in the past five seasons. Last year, despite the solid average, he was barely on pace for double-digits. It wouldn't be a surprise to watch Comerica Park conspire in Cabrera's demise the way it did with Victor Martinez, turning erstwhile homers into outs.
In the famous words of Martinez, "This f**king ballpark is too f**king big."
But so are those outfield gaps -- and that's where Cabrera has always made his money (more on that money in a bit). He's never really tried to hit home runs; they've rather been the upshot of trying to hit line drives. Executing this approach still seems well within Cabrera's grasp.
If Cabrera digs up his past this season, it's worth wondering what might become of his future. The Tigers have put up for sale any veteran with value since hitting the detonate button in 2017. Cabrera always seemed like he'd emerge from the rubble, simply by virtue of his contract. He's signed, as you surely know, for five more seasons at about $31 million per year.
But consider this: general manager Al Avila intimated on Thursday that Jordan Zimmermann -- yes, Jordan Zimmermann -- could be traded this season if the pitcher stays healthy and recovers his form. Teams would be interested, Avila said, despite Zimmermann's seemingly untradable deal. So why not Cabrera?
Well, start with loyalty, and mix in some sentimentality.
"For me," Avila said, "I think Cabrera is going to be with the Tigers the remainder of his career. I really do. He's a guy that's going to be a Hall-of-Famer, Mr. Ilitch wanted to keep him here, and he's going to wear that Detroit Tigers cap."
Indeed, they're different cases, Cabrera and Zimmermann. One you surely trade for whatever you can get, even if it's just some money off the books. But the other isn't so...immaterial. Franchise icons aren't just thrown away. With Cabrera, you probably hold on to what remains unless an offer comes along that's too good to resist.
That's Avila's position, anyway.
"In Major League Baseball, I would say the majority of people feel that Cabrera can still hit, will continue to hit and he's still a feared hitter," Avila said. "If Cabrera stays healthy, he will be a productive player for any team. So anything's possible."
Things used to be definite for Cabrera, like a .300-plus average, 30-plus home runs and 100-plus RBIs. They were as guaranteed come April as baseball itself. These days they're hopes, like staying healthy and winning games. Some might call them dreams. Cabrera wants to bring them back to life this season, the first season of the rest of his career.
"If I want to prove people wrong, I gotta be on the field," he said. "I gotta stay healthy. That's the bottom line."
