Kuzul

Detroit Tigers third baseman Miguel Cabrera is in the middle of yet another spectacular offensive season.

Entering Tuesday’s action, Cabrera was hitting .328/.387/.578 with 23 home runs and an AL-best 79 RBI. According to FanGraphs, Cabrera ranks fourth in the American League with a .407 weighted on-base average (wOBA), a stat that measure’s a given hitter’s overall offensive value.

The scary part is that Cabrera is only getting better as the season goes along. In the month of July, he’s hitting .397/.449/.765 with seven homers and 17 RBI in 18 games. His most recent homer was the 300th of his career.

So yeah, Cabrera is a pretty good hitter.

But you knew that already, right?

Of course you did. It’s hard to ignore hitters of Cabrera’s caliber, and goodness knows he’s gotten his fair share of accolades. He’s made the All-Star team seven times, been a home run champion, an RBI champion, a batting champion and, of course, a World Series champion.

There are some things missing from Cabrera’s resume, though. It seems like a travesty that he has yet to win an MVP award, and you’d think he’d have more than one batting title, one home run title, etc.

There’s also no escaping the sense that, as beloved as Cabrera may be, he isn’t as beloved as he should be. As far as contemporary hitters go, people just don’t think of Cabrera the way they think of, say, Albert Pujols. This may have something to do with the fact that Cabrera just isn’t as likable as Pujols is, for a variety of different reasons (some of which involved a bottle). 

But make no mistake about it, Cabrera very much belongs in the same discussion as Pujols. Since Cabrera’s first full major league season in 2004, he and Pujols have been the two best right-handed hitters in baseball by a significant margin. To boot, their numbers are more similar than you probably think.

Observe:

Pujols clearly has an edge over Cabrera in the power department since the start of the 2004 season, but he doesn’t have a huge edge over Cabrera in key areas like RBI, batting average or weighted on-base average. We’re talking about two elite hitters who have been operating on more or less the same level for almost a decade at this point.

Granted, Pujols’ numbers in this demonstration are slightly skewed by the more human numbers he’s put up in the last couple seasons. He’s shown in the last couple months of the 2012 season that he is still one of the game’s best right-handed hitters, but the sheer dominance he enjoyed during his prime has probably been lost forever. 

Cabrera, on the other hand, is smack in the middle of the prime of his career. He enjoyed great success in the first five years of his career, but he’s been at his best since the start of the 2009 season.

The only other right-handed hitters who have operated on the same level as Cabrera in the last three-plus seasons are Pujols and Ryan Braun. But as this table shows, Cabrera has been better than both of them:

Here, the only area Cabrera doesn’t have a leg up is in home runs where Pujols has him beat by about 20. Everywhere else, Cabrera reigns supreme.

Translation: He’s the best right-handed hitter in baseball today. Hands down.

I’ll stop well short of saying that Cabrera is the best right-handed hitter of all time, something that can be easily said about Pujols. It’s possible that we’ll be able to argue Cabrera’s case as the greatest righty hitter of all time a few years down the road, but doing so now would be premature.

We can, however, say with confidence that Cabrera has already taken his place among the greatest righty hitters in the game’s modern history.

I ran a search on Baseball-Reference.com for right-handed hitters with at least 6,000 plate appearances since World War II (i.e. after 1946). You’d be surprised where Cabrera ranks in the key categories.

Cabrera has a career batting average of .318, and that ties him for second among righty hitters in the post-WWII era. His .952 OPS is good for fifth, ahead of greats like Jeff Bagwell and Alex Rodriguez. His 150 OPS+ ranks ninth, just barely behind Frank Robinson, Manny Ramirez and Hank Aaron.

The only question now is what kind of numbers Cabrera is going to end up with. He hasn’t yet turned 30, so it’s reasonable to think that he has four or five more years of elite production left in him. These will give him a shot at ending his career with a .320 career batting average, a feat accomplished by relatively few hitters throughout baseball history.

It’s also likely that Cabrera will end up in the 500 Home Run Club in a matter of years, and he could very well make a run at 600 home runs when all is said and done.

Curious about how many righty hitters have at least 500 home runs and a .320 batting average to their names?

Only one: Jimmie Foxx. At least until Pujols joins the 500 Home Run Club.

I’ll grant that it’s typically not a good idea to get too carried away with career projections, but an exception can be made in Cabrera’s case. He’s on a path to all-time greatness.

So go ahead and refer to Cabrera as one of the best right-handed hitters ever the next time you get a chance. You won’t be exaggerating.

If anybody argues, you can refer them to the numbers. They don’t lie.

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