Eric at Rays Anatomy has a fun post up debating the relative merits of B.J. Upton and Robinson Cano. I’m pretty squarely in the Upton camp on this one. Cano is a terrific young player, but much of his value is tied into batting average, and second basemen don’t always age well.
Upton, meanwhile, just posted a 136 OPS+ as a 22-year-old, which is ridiculous. In the history of baseball, 48 players have been that productive at that age. Only 11 of those seasons have come in the last 30 years:

Jack Clark, 1978, 152 OPS+
Eddie Murray, 1978, 140
Rickey Henderson, 1981, 150
Cal …read more

I’ve been holding off on this one because it isn’t finalized, but everyone and their mother is reporting the deal, so I suppose it’s safe to comment. The Florida Marlins reportedly are sending Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis to the Detroit Tigers for Cameron Maybin, Andrew Miller, Mike Rabelo, Eulogio De La Cruz, Dallas Trahern, and Burke Badenhop.
This is going to take a while, so you may want to pull up a chair. Heck, go ahead and order a pizza.
Headed to Detroit
Cabrera is a stud. There’s no other way to put it. In any given year, he’s a legitimate MVP …read more

Andrew at Defensive Indifference lists the 10 sports figures he blogged about most in 2007, as requested by the incomparable Jamie Mottram. As I did last year, I’m again participating in this project (thanks, Jamie!). Following Andrew’s lead, here is my list, in alphabetical order:

Barry Bonds. His stories pretty much write themselves.
Miguel Cabrera. Anyone who gets scolded by Ozzie Guillen for being too fat is okay in my book.
Fausto Carmona. One of the biggest surprises of 2007.
Daisuke Matsuzaka. Not as good as the hype, but still pretty good.
Gil Meche. Irresponsible spending almost got the Royals out of last place.
Jake Peavy. …read more

There’s nonsense, and then there’s nonsense. I don’t dispute that the Florida Marlins might be shopping Miguel Cabrera, but something here seems a bit, well, fishy:
Why would the Marlins, with the worst attendance in the game and desperately trying to land a stadium deal, unload their best player and one of the top hitters in baseball?
For one, Cabrera – who made $7.4 million last season – stands to make at least $10 million in arbitration this winter, a challenging price tag for a low-revenue team. Also, despite averaging 31 homers, 116 RBI and a .327 batting average the past three …read more

We have a new entrant for Idiot of the Year. Friday night, a “fan” in Florida reached over the wall and caught a drive off the bat of the Marlins’ Miguel Cabrera, denying Cabrera of a possible extra-base hit. The punch line? Cabrera is this guy’s favorite player.
Uh, whatever.
Quoth the “fan”:
I did something that anyone else would do.
Wow. Sometimes it really takes a special kind of stupid…

Ozzie Guillen manages the Chicago White Sox. Miguel Cabrera plays (very well, I might add) for the Florida Marlins. Both hail from Venezuela.
Now Guillen is telling Cabrera to lose weight. Quoth the Chicago skipper:
When you’re getting older and you go down, they say you’re fat. Right now it’s, “Oh, he’s a little chubby. He likes to eat.” When you’re not hitting .340 with 40 home runs, they’re going to call you a fat boy from Venezuela. You’d better lose some weight.
This is sort of touching, but it’s also sort of weird. Like, it’s nice to see Guillen concerned about his …read more

Seems there’s a little storm brewing about a chat between New York Mets GM Omar Minaya and Florida Marlins third baseman Miguel Cabrera. On the one hand, I get the whole “appearance of impropriety” thing. On the other hand, get real. These guys are in the same line of work, and it seems natural that people will talk every once in a while. This “story” strikes me as a lot of noise, but who knows.
The other interesting item here, and it’s really just a footnote, is how much pitching talent the Mets have given away over the past several months. …read more

The 2007 staff predictions are up at Hardball Times. I mostly went with the flow, but chose a different path in a few cases. I’m the only writer who picked the Detroit Tigers to win the AL Central and the Angels to win the World Series. I’d expected a little support for Joe Mauer as AL MVP (Grady Sizemore got more), but at least that one was fairly diverse. Where I went kind of crazy is in my choice for NL MVP
Before I go any further, you should know my bias: I can’t stand Albert Pujols. He’s a brilliant player, …read more