Lakeland, Fla. — All this new Tigers flesh steps to the plate during spring camp at Lakeland and a half-inning later shifts to its infield and outfield posts.
The Meadows brothers, Austin and Parker, are either back with the team (Austin) or moving closer (Parker) to the day they’re in manager AJ Hinch’s lineup.
Nick Maton and Matt Vierling look like everyday guys following January’s big trade with the Phillies. Cesar Hernandez is in the mix. Kerry Carpenter, Akil Baddoo, Ryan Kreidler — so many young guys bidding for work.
And then there is Miguel Cabrera.
The Tigers are handling this situation, shall we say, delicately.
What everyone knows is that the Tigers very much are caught.
Cabrera, if he weren’t a Hall of Fame-ticketed player, had he not been for the past 15 years a Detroit demigod, and almost certainly if he weren’t drawing $32 million in 2023, would have been excused from 2023 duty.
The Tigers have better options at designated hitter. Any big-league team would.
This all is obvious in Cabrera’s 2022 numbers: .254 batting average in 112 games, five home runs, .622 OPS. He had, for 2022, a WAR (wins above replacement) of minus-1. It means that a standard lower-end MLB roster player — cheap and undistinguished — would benefit the Tigers more than Cabrera.
In games after June 21, as a long-ailing right knee became all but intolerable, his 2022 stats were even more sobering: .203 batting average, .533 OPS.
Cabrera In three weeks turns 40.
It would have been understood, and certainly appreciated by his bosses, had a megastar sat with them last autumn and said something along these lines:
“Look — we all know I’ve got a contract for 2023. We all know I’m not helping this team win, and I can’t expect to be of any real help next season.
“So … it’s better if I agree the contract will be honored and you can get on with your business.”
That arrangement would have been appreciated, as well, by fans who wish not to rely on memories as they say thanks and farewell to one of the Tigers’ all-time baseball masters, a man with status alongside Cobb, Gehringer, Greenberg, and Kaline.
But there has been one problem in any facts-faced, pragmatic, competitively advantageous script that might have been written for 2023.
Cabrera wants none of it.
His wishes are being respected.
The Tigers are letting him, at least for now, make the call. They figure they owe it to a Hall of Fame player who has been a baseball player for the ages.
Cabrera, it must be acknowledged, has another reason for hanging on beyond his love for playing big-league baseball.
He isn’t interested in taking a $32 million paycheck to do nothing.
“I want to go out there and be me and have fun,” he said last month, after checking into Lakeland, just before he left to play for Venezuela in the WBC tournament. “If they give me a chance to play, I’m going to play. I don’t know what my role is going to be this year. I am open to anything. Hopefully, I can hit and be in the lineup.”
We get this fire on his part, absolutely. He wants to tough this one out, no matter the aching knee and body overall. No matter the likelihood there could be even fewer hits ahead than there were in 2022. Never mind that Hinch will be left to figure out how to carry a DH he celebrates even as he hints Cabrera will not play regularly.
“He wants to play and he’s earned the right,” Hinch said, nobly, last month about Cabrera. “He’s going to be a contributor. We have an idea of what our plan is, but he is going to be a big part of this team.”
For now, anyway.
This sticky wicket was, of course, always a possibility, if not probability, when late owner Mike Ilitch decided in 2014 to tie Cabrera to the Tigers in what amounted to a lifetime contract extension, worth $300 million.
He wanted his Cooperstown-targeted superstar to always be a Tiger. To know forever how much a generous owner appreciated what he did in helping the Tigers to a string of playoff seasons, with Cabrera a big reason during three of those years that Comerica Park drew 3 million fans.
Now has come the flip-side to Ilitch’s magnanimity: a slow, steady, demise in these twilight years brought upon not so much by age but by knee, neck, back, foot and ankle miseries only Cabrera can comprehend in full.
The specter of Cabrera struggling through 2023 is not pleasant. It invites questions about whether another scenario might arrive.
It’s worth contemplating.
Imagine, as it absolutely can be imagined, that Cabrera survives a chilly April. He hits in May at about the rate he hit in 2022, but moves through June with numbers that mirror last summer’s slide: a low-.200 average and another of those .500-grade OPS tallies.
If his knee feels as it’s too often felt during these years, he might — might — say this:
“Hey, I tried. We all tried. This isn’t working. You need to get busy building this ballclub.
“Let’s call it a day at the All-Star break.”
That, in fact, seems like a plausible scenario.
Cabrera already has said he doesn’t want a fancy goodbye tour. If he decides at some point even before midseason that enough is enough, he could retire gracefully.
And there the Tigers could show their ability to one-up a man on his way to Cooperstown: They could see that he goes out, regally, in special and creative ways.
Rather than a single day of hosannas, they could stage an entire Miguel Cabrera Weekend during a second-half series. There would be a kind of festiveness to saying farewell during a big weekend gala.
In fact, that might be the way to go — an epic farewell this year or next — even if Cabrera, by way of his sheer ability to marvel, manages to stick it out for six months and 162 games.
That would be Hollywood’s way, of course, for this Cabrera grand finale. There would be a happy finish. The Tigers simply have chosen to accept they, and a multi-decade maestro named Miguel Cabrera, are in this together, come what may during this long goodbye.
Lynn Henning is a freelance writer and retired Detroit News sports reporter.