Inbox: Where has Miggy's power gone?

Beat reporter Jason Beck answers fans' questions

May 6th, 2019

The weather across metro Detroit was wonderful for most of Monday, a great day for a Tigers game. Unfortunately, it was an off-day, so I did the next-best thing by sitting outside for a while and answering questions about the Tigers (online, not out loud at strangers).

I’ve written about this a couple of times this season, though not since his only homer a week and a half ago. The metrics from Statcast suggest should be hitting for more power than he has so far. His hard-hit rate of 50 percent ranks in the 90th percentile among Major League hitters and is just shy of his rate in 2016. His average exit velocity of 91.8 mph ranks in the 86th percentile, but it has been dropping a bit recently.

One thing that has risen noticeably has been his launch angle. When I wrote about this subject on April 10, his average was 6.3 degrees, half of his career norm. It’s now up to 11.4 degrees, which is just shy of his average. His ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio has dropped from 1.45 on April 10 to 0.91 now, according to Baseball-Reference.

Given the launch angles, exit velocities and other factors, his expected slugging percentage according to Statcast is .433 instead of the actual .372 slugging rate he has now. His career slugging percentage is .549, but I think the days of those rates are over.

I’ve always thought that Cabrera’s power will shrink before his average and bat speed do, kind of like Magglio Ordonez in his later years. He’s a smart enough hitter to send line drives around the field as he ages into his late 30s. The power is diminishing, but I’m skeptical it’s gone quite yet. He’s a 36-year-old hitter coming off a ruptured biceps tendon that cost him most of last season.

As a footnote, the stats suggest that lineup construction is not costing Cabrera power. His 65.4-percent strike rate is his highest since 2008, according to Baseball-Reference. According to FanGraphs, he’s seeing 42.4 percent of pitches in the strike zone, which is down from his last couple of years, but higher than any season from 2010-16. He’s swinging outside the strike zone at a rate (36.5 percent) that’s higher than any season of his career.

Yes, for several reasons. is 24 years old and still developing as a pitcher with very good health and relatively little wear and tear on his own. He isn’t up for arbitration until after next season, and he won’t be a free agent until after the 2023 campaign. And maybe most importantly, the Tigers need young relievers in their long-term plans. They have plenty of starting pitching prospects, and maybe some of them will convert over to the bullpen. But even if you assume that and add in a healthy Bryan Garcia, they need late-inning relievers, and Jimenez fits the profile.

No buzz on this. I know the Tigers did this back in the day with , who made his Major League debut during a doubleheader in Cleveland on the Fourth of July in 2005. But these Tigers are in a different situation than that 2005 squad, both in terms of where they stand competitively and how their roster fits together in terms of prospects. Verlander was already on Detroit’s 40-man roster before he made his debut, having signed a Major League contract out of the MLB Draft.

If we were talking about a doubleheader later in the year, maybe there would be some buzz regarding . But nothing at this point.

The Tigers are taking a deliberate pace with after his previous setbacks over the last year and a half. He’s getting close to a return to game action. I’d expect we’ll see him at Class A Advanced Lakeland relatively soon.