Miguel Cabrera’s 3,000th Hit Put Him in Exclusive Company
Miguel Cabrera had to wait a couple of extra days to make history, thanks to a hitless afternoon capped by a controversial managerial decision and then a rainout. Nonetheless, on Saturday afternoon he collected his 3,000th career hit with a single off the Rockies’ Antonio Senzatela. In doing so, he joined some elite company as not only the 33rd player to reach 3,000 hits, but also the seventh to do so as a member of the 500-homer club and the third to reach both of those round numbers with a career batting average of .300 or better. The other two? Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. You may have heard of them, and even if you don’t put much stock in batting average, you have to admit that’s about as cool as company gets.
What’s more, Cabrera actually owns the highest batting average and on-base percentage of the seven players who have both milestones, with a wRC+ that trails only Mays and Aaron:
| Player | 500th HR | Total HR | 3000th Hit | Total Hits | AVG/OBP/SLG | wRC+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hank Aaron | 7/14/68 | 755 | 5/17/70 | 3771 | .305/.374/.555 | 153 |
| Willie Mays | 9/13/65 | 660 | 7/18/70 | 3283 | .301/.384/.557 | 154 |
| Eddie Murray | 9/6/96 | 504 | 6/30/95 | 3255 | .287/.359/.476 | 127 |
| Rafael Palmeiro | 5/11/03 | 569 | 7/15/05 | 3020 | .288/.371/.515 | 130 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 8/4/07 | 696 | 6/19/15 | 3115 | .295/.380/.550 | 141 |
| Albert Pujols | 4/22/14 | 681 | 5/4/18 | 3308 | .297/.375/.544 | 141 |
| Miguel Cabrera | 8/22/21 | 502 | 4/23/22 | 3002 | .310/.387/.532 | 143 |
For all of his struggles over the past half-decade, Cabrera would still have to go 0-for-352 to drop his batting average to .299. Even with those struggles and his lack of defensive value (he’s 102 runs below average in terms of Defensive Runs Saved, inlcluding 11 below in just 847.1 innings at first base since 2018), he ranks 11th in JAWS among first basemen (68.8/44.8/56.8), in no danger of slipping below Palmeiro (13th at 71.9/38.9/55.4) or Murray (16th at 68.7/39.2/53.9). And while he may be the last to reach 3,000 hits for some time given the dearth of candidates (Dan Szymborski put Jose Altuve, who has 1,783 hits, at 34% and Freddie Freeman, who has 1,723 hits, at 28% last September), he’s hardly the least.
Cabrera collected his milestone in front of 37,566 fans in the first inning of Saturday’s doubleheader opener at Comerica Park. Fittingly for a player who has taken great pride in his ability to use the whole field, he did it by poking a groundball through the right side of the infield:
Cabrera’s 500th home run, at the Rogers Centre off the Blue Jays’ Steven Matz last August 22, was an opposite-field shot as well.
Cabrera joined Ty Cobb and Al Kaline as the other players to reach 3,000 hits as Tigers. As ESPN’s Marly Rivera pointed out, he’s the first Venezuelan to reach 3,000 hits and the seventh Latino, after Roberto Clemente, Rod Carew, Palmeiro, Rodriguez, Adrián Beltré, and Pujols. Of the last five players to reach 3,000 hits, Ichiro Suzuki is the only one who isn’t Latino.
As an 11-time All-Star, four-time batting champion, two-time MVP, and Triple Crown Award winner, the 39-year-old Cabrera didn’t need 3,000 hits to secure his spot in the pantheon, but the milestone has been a long time in the making. He collected his 2,500th hit on September 18, 2016, near the end of his 14th season in the majors, and in doing so became just the eighth player to reach that milestone by the end of his age-33 season. His five-plus seasons since then have largely been a slog, as he’s batted just .265/.336/.400 for a 98 wRC+. A groin strain and a pair of herniated discs limited him to 117 hits and a 93 wRC+ in 130 games in 2017, a ruptured left biceps tendon cut his ’18 season short at 38 games, and he played in just 84% of Tigers games over the past three seasons.
Cabrera entered last season needing 134 hits and 13 homers to reach the two major milestones, and he projected to become the first of the seven players to do so in the same season. But as I noted at the time, he didn’t have much margin for error when it came to his hit total given the drop in his batting average and his propensity for injury. Indeed, he missed 13 games in April due to a left biceps strain, didn’t get his batting average above .200 for good until June 14, and finished the year with a meager .256/.316/.386 line, leaving him 13 hits short.
Though he has yet to produce much power — no homers yet, and just two doubles — Cabrera collected 12 hits over his first 11 games, including three in his first three plate appearances on Wednesday night against the Yankees. He had one more shot at concluding his chase on Wednesday night, but Clay Holmes struck him out swinging. On Thursday afternoon, Jordan Montgomery gave up a steep but routine fly ball in his first plate appearance, then struck him out twice. With the Yankees trying to keep their deficit at 1–0 late, Cabrera came to bat against lefty Lucas Luetge with runners on second and third and two outs in the eighth inning, but manager Aaron Boone elected to issue an intentional walk — something Cabrera hadn’t received since September 10, 2020 — to face lefty Austin Meadows. It was a questionable move but not an entirely indefensible one, as decline-phase Cabrera has been much stronger against lefties than righties (135 to 104 in term of wRC+ since 2016), though as Ben Clemens wrote, loading the bases was a particularly bad idea. The walk backfired spectacularly when Meadows blooped a ball into center field for a two-run double.
As for Cabrera, he took the intentional pass in stride, attempting to calm the Comerica fans:
After getting intentionally walked, Miggy calms down the fans. ? pic.twitter.com/1FAgQYg18l
— Cut4 (@Cut4) April 21, 2022
Afterward, he told reporters, “This is baseball, you know? It was a lefty behind me at the plate… To walk me intentionally, that’s part of the game. I went 0-for-3, but we got a chance to win. Beautiful.”
Cabrera had to wait an extra day due to Friday night’s rainout but singled off the third pitch he saw from Senzatela. He added a two-run single in the sixth inning in what turned out to be a 13–0 rout, and then went 1-for-4 in the nightcap as the Rockies won, 3–2.
So now what? So long as Cabrera is swinging a hot bat — and even without the power, his .319/.377/.362 is good for a 120 wRC+ in this year of hitless baseball — he is likely to remain the Tigers’ full-time DH. He has yet to play the field this year, as top prospect Spencer Torkelson made the team out of spring training, took over first base, and has hit .217/.345/.435 for a 138 wRC+.
Cabrera’s defensive numbers don’t exactly make the case that he should be playing the field, and neither his projections (including a .251/.315/.378 line and -0.3 WAR via his Depth Charts forecast) nor his batted ball stats, which include a 55.9% groundball rate, 8.8% barrel rate, .241 xBA and .366 xSLG, suggest he can keep up even this singles-happy stretch. Then again, it was only two years ago that he had a .286 xBA and .515 xSLG and wound up with little to show for it — just a modest 103 wRC+ and 0.3 WAR in the pandemic-shortened season.
The problem for the Tigers is that Cabrera is making $32 million this year and is owed $32 million next year as well. The cost is sunk, but a team that aspires to end its streak of five straight losing seasons and seven without a postseason appearance may have to get real about his role. A Pujols-like arrangement, where he serves as the primary DH against lefties, might make sense if it comes to that point, and could even restore some of his luster.
Even with the Tigers already scuffling at 6–9 with both Matt Manning and Casey Mize on the injured list, Cabrera’s role is a problem for another day. For now, it’s a good time to celebrate one of this generation’s greatest hitters securing a particularly exceptional achievement.
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
Because he’s DHing and essentially a tortoise on the basepaths, Cabrera is roughly at replacement level so far.
Here’s a question for Jay, that might even be an article: When was the last time a player got his 3000th hit when he was still a legitimate star? Like, 4 WAR or greater? Jeter was very likely a functional baseball player when he got it, but I think he had fallen from “legitimate star” status. Same with Paul Molitor and Pete Rose and Carl Yasztremski, I think. And Cal Ripken and Adrian Beltre and Tony Gwynn and A-Rod.
The last one I can think of for certain is Hank Aaron, who topped 5.2 wins in 1973, a string of something like 17 consecutive 4+ win seasons (almost all of them over 6 wins, for that matter) and who broke 3K hits several years earlier. Is this it? Is Hank Aaron the last time someone broke the 3K barrier while they were still obviously a star (in terms of productivity?).
Beltre got hit 3000 as part of his 2017 season, in which he had 2.5 fWAR in 94 games. That would work out to a 4 fWAR pace over 150 games, and he was coming off a 5.4 fWAR season, so I would say its Beltre.
Hm, that’s an interesting one. So he’d get close to that on a rate basis, if not over it. Was he hurt that year?
Yeah, he had leg problems that year and missed all of April and almost all of May.
I’m not entirely sure that it counts under my original criteria, but it also doesn’t seem to not count. At the very least it deserves a mention.
Stars get injured. It doesn’t mean they’re not stars, especially if they produce at a star level for the time they’re on the field.
Beltre had 2.5fWAR & 3.8rWAR in 94 games the year he crossed 3000 hits. I guess he was on pace.
Pete Rose was probably still pretty good. He was on his original Cincinati run when he crossed 3,000. I think it was the same year as his 44 game hitting streak..though his WAR was 3.4rWAR/3.5fWAR..so he falls short.
Molitor hit .341 & had 225 hits & 113 RBI the year he passed 3,000, though again his WAR was short due to no defensive value & the high run scoring era in the late 90’s.
Doesn’t the “replacement” value in WAR get recalculated each year? If so, the high run scoring era wouldn’t matter.
I actually have a table for this, first published on the occasion of Albert Pujols’ pursuit of 3,000 https://blogs.fangraphs.com/albert-pujols-and-the-crawl-to-3000-hits/. I updated it but opted not to include it within this piece. Jeter (2011), A-Rod (2015) and Beltre (2017) all had season of 2-2.9 fWAR in the year that they reached 3,000. You’d have to go back to Pete Rose (1978) to find a player with 3.0 WAR, to Robert Clemente (1972) to find one with 4.0 WAR, and to Hank Aaron (1970) to find one with 5.0. Ty Cobb (1921) and Tris Speaker (1925) are the only two players with at least 6.0 WAR in their 3,000 seasons.
Stan Musial deserves a mention. He had 4.0 WAR the year he reached 3,000 hits. But he also missed a season due to WWII. Without that, he would have likely reached 3,000 the year before when he had 6.1 WAR.
Similar situation with Willie Mays who missed nearly two full seasons to the Korean War. Without that, he likely reaches 3,000 hits in 1967 or 1968. In 1967, he “only” had 4.1 WAR but in 1968 he had 6.7.
Of course, no mention of missing years due to war would be complete without mentioning Ted Williams. Missed 3 full years for WWII & then played 43 of 308 possible games due to the Korean War.
Being somewhat conservative, likely missed 600 or so games. Give him the 650-750 hits he would likely have gotten & he probably hits 3000 hits during his 9.7 WAR 1957 season.
Good catch! I was focused on guys who actually reached 3,000 hits so forgot about Williams.
Heck, Musial and Williams would’ve both been part of this exclusive 3,000/500 club had they not missed the time they did to serve their country.
Lou Gehrig as well, had he not gotten ALS.
There are a lot of “if”s in baseball careers…
A-Rod had a wRC+ of 129 the year he got it, and he hadn’t yet had a mark below 113 since he was 19 years old.
Great recent run of articles…Suzuki,Heaney,Ramirez,Hittless Baseball now Miggy… easy to forget about Beltre having 3000
Jeez Louise! Cabrera sure had an outerspace bananas kinda crazy season in 2012. His triple crown was really more like a quintuple or septuple crown. Dude led AL in Average, HR, RBIs, slugging, wOBA, wRAA, hard-hit %, etc., etc. Helluva dominant year to put it mildly. Yeah 2012 was also Trout’s breathtaking emergence as a baseball god, but Miggy was absolute dynamite at the plate from 2012-13, as the highlight of a slam-dunk HOF career.
How old do you really think he is?
39
You’re thinking of the other HOF-bound RH 1st baseman who was signed to a horrible contract
The fraternity of no-$#!% HOF players is dwindling fast. I don’t see the next group on the horizon and they are going to be well short of the historic milestones. This has to be a reflection of lacking player development in some way. The only reason Miggy got 3000 hits is the giant contract which has kept him around. The 90s were one of the truly great generations of players – this one is pretty bad! I could be missing some, but I think that the great players of this generation all caught the tail end of the great class of the 90s. The rise in sabermetrics coincidences with a decline in greatness. This makes sense, as the emphasis is no longer on the players. Player development is sacrificed as the game is micromanaged into the ground.
Hoo boy. Where to start here?
More likely, it’s a) voters preferences changed through the years to get stricter, which is borne out in the percentage of players who reached the hall of fame in the earlier years vs modern years; b) voter preferences haven’t adapted to match the modern game, e.g. focusing on things like 300 wins, 3000 hits, etc.; c) it was a lot easier to stand out from the crowd in 1915 when there was no weight training, organized offseason, nutritionists, etc. and there wasn’t as much money on the line, so instead of doing those things, the players were selling suits in the offseason.
Or it could be the children that are all wrong. Stupid kids with their punk rock and their nose rings…
There’s really no point in engaging Ronnie. (S)He’s been commenting here for years, nearly every one of which is irrational, controversial, asinine, or utterly dumb, with some encompassing multiple choices.
At this point I am convinced that Ronnie is a genius masquerading as a total moron. The fact that they have been so completely wrong about everything for years is the equivalent of scoring a 0% on a true/false test. At this point, any normal idiot would have said SOMEthing intelligent purely by random chance, so I can only imagine that Ronnie does this intentionally.
It’s clearly a troll account designed to get a reaction out of people. I don’t know why people still respond, which is what he wants
So, Miggy joined a club (3000 hits, 500 HR) that 7 players in the history of baseball have reached. Here is when those 7 accomplished the feat:
late 60’s/early 70’s- Mays, Aaron
90’s- Murray
2000’s- Palmeiro (chemically acheived?)
2015 to today- AROD (chemical help), Pujols, Miggy
So, 3 out of 7 (or 2 out of 5, if you want to discount AROD & Palmeiro) to accomplish this feat in the 145+ years of MLB have done so in the last 7 years..& this is proof that the talent level is dwindling.
Alrighty then!
A shocking number of players who got their 3000th hit since 1960-something have been pretty worthless when they actually got that hit. See Jay’s article on Albert Pujols that he references upthread. Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente were both stars, and Jeter, Molitor, Eddie Murray, and Gwynn were functional baseball players (if not stars). Pete Rose and Gwynn were somewhere in between. But Wade Boggs, Rod Carew, Rickey Henderson, George Brett, Robin Young, Dave Winfield, Craig Biggio, Rafael Palmeiro, Lou Brock, and Al Kaline were somewhere in between “guy who sits on the bench” and “not rosterable.”
So this has always been a thing–guys being bad when they get their 3000th hit. There will probably be fewer of them going forward, as teams understanding aging curves better and give out fewer massive contracts, so there will be less Cabrera and Pujols-like “chases”. But I’m also weirdly optimistic for the future. Obviously durability is a big issue but Soto is only 23 and has 500 hits, and Wander Franco is running a .349 BA at age 21. There are other players who have interesting shots too–Mike Trout, Xander Boegarts, and Bryce Harper. Most of them won’t make it, but if we knew they would, it’s wouldn’t be any fun.
I’d disagree on Rose (Can’t believe I’m sticking up for Pete Rose).
He was pretty good still. 120 wRC+, led the league in 2B, 3.5fWAR. Had a 44 game hitting streak that year. & hit better the next year (1979)- hit .331, led the league in OBP, had 208 hits, 134 wRC+, 3.1 fWAR (IIRC, he moved from 3B to 1B, which is the reason for the WAR drop). He stunk in 1980, but, then put up 124 wRC+ & 1.9fWAR in the 111 game 1981 strike seaon (2.8 pace), while leading the league in hits.
After that it became a slog for 5 years where he was chasing Ty Cobb & the less said about that, his managerial career & his gambling exploits the better, but, some of that stuff has shaded how good he really was for a long time..
MLB has a similar post on possible 3000 hit guys. It seems like Soto and Vladdy might walk too much to get close. Wander has as much a chance as any very young guy barring injury. I also like Bichette as a possiblity because he is more of a free swinger, young, on an offensive team likely to get him extra ABs, and already has a 200 hit season under his belt.
Soto’s got a decent chance. He’s got 500 hits and he’s 23 years old. Now, granted, he’ll probably need to play another 15 years to get there, but…he’s 23 years old.
I thought about Bichette. Getting 191 hits last year helps. But I don’t think he’s going to play long enough to make it. He’s gifted but I think he’s not going to adapt well once the skills start fading.
As for Vlad Jr–he did get 188 hits last year, and he’s only 23.
Here’s a fun dark horse if he keeps his speed long-term–Trea Turner. He’s only 28 and piled up a huge number of hits last year.
Soto had 157 hits last year while hitting .313. Miggy got 177 hits or more for 11 straight years. Something with Soto would have to fundamentally change or else he’ll have to play until he’s 47 to get to 3000 hits.
You can say he has 500 hits at age 23. Miggy had 654 by the end of his age 23 season. And he was already putting up season after season with more hits than Soto can reasonably expect to get with his batting profile.
But I think it’s that free swinging that’s the issue. Bichette has years and years before he has to worry about a decline in skills, but his profile makes it seem unlikely that he’s a player that’s going to age well into his 30s
In most cases you almost have to hang around for 3-4 years “too long” to reach these milestones
*cough* PEDs *cough*
Yikes! Well this is a rather bleak outlook, “The rise in sabermetrics coincidences with a decline in greatness.”
Regardless what arbitrary element is decided coincides with the progression of greatness, we should first examine what defines greatness.
Because over the eons the game has endured various changes to style of play, manager tendencies, types of equipment used, diversity of competition faced, types of pitches thrown, velocity thrown at, size of ballparks, PED use, geographic locations, elevations, etc., I like to look simply at how well a player is performing vs. peers of the era of that player. Like, how well Mike Trout performs vs. all other hitters from say, 2012-2022 (w/appropriate ballpark adjustments). And then examined further specific to position, like how well Mike Schmidt performed vs. all other thirdbasemen from 1978-1988 (or insert appropriate years here, etc.), etc.
Then you look at the difference in performance between that player and the next best one (or ten) from same era. How large that difference is may tell you something (but not everything) about that player’s greatness.
The “rise of sabremetrics” has nothing to do with that. There will always remain ways to evaluate greatness, and amount managers micromanage would not change how great a player is or not. They would still emerge. Wander Franco, Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, Fernando Tatis Jr., Vladdy Guerrero Jr., David Ortiz, Buster Posey, Mookie Betts, Juan Soto, Max Scherzer, etc., etc.—just some examples from now and past decade of players whose greatness transcends the sinister rise of sabremetrics, radical infield shifts, and frequent use of situational relief pitchers.
I think the game has plenty of guys on hall of fame trajectories such as SOTO, Trout, Jose Ramirez, Freeman, Pujols, etc.
Tip: It’s easier to be much better than other people when other people suck.
I can’t disagree with anything in this article about Miggy’s struggles in recent years, both on the field, and with injuries, but its been an absolute pleasure watching him all these years. I managed to go to the Thursday day game in which he posted an ofer, and got the 8th inning walk. Fans (including myself) went crazy over the call, and let Boone know about it, but it was the proper call to make.
We know about his defensive struggles, and he’s clearly not the best base runner at this point in his career, but if we focus on the exclusivity of his accomplishments, aside from what this article already mentioned, he’s one double from 600.
He’s already in exclusive company with an above .300 avg, 500 HRs, and 3000 hits. Hitting his 600th double is even more rare. Having a Triple Crown makes him the only one of his kind with these kind of career numbers.
Its been an incredible run for the first ballot Hall of Famer.
Something else I thought was cool:
Miggy’s first ML hit- HR
Hit 1000- HR
Hit 2000- HR
Yes, his power is gone, but it would’ve been really cool to see him hit 3000 out of the park. His best chance was probably the pop up against Montgomery, where he got under it a bit.
but that walk really wasn’t the proper call to make.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/two-managerial-decisions-and-another-bad-intentional-walk/
what a great read, both the story and the comments, i love this place.. thank god for baseball!!
and that photo of Miggy tipping his helmet is classic and timeless!