Miguel Cabrera hits .300 with walk-off single

One of baseball’s all-time greats, Miguel Cabrera, got his 3029th career hit in style, knocking in the winning run in a 4-3 win over the Cleveland Guardians.

Currently 27th on the all time list in both base hits and home runs, Miggy is one of only seven players to have hit 500 home runs and 3,000 hits, along with Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Eddie Murray, Rafael Palmeiro, Albert Pujols, and Alex Rodriguez.

More importantly, it had been almost three years since the last time Miguel Cabrera finished a game with a .300 batting average. But his line drive up the middle put that three-year stretch to an end.

“He’s putting up such good at-bats and contributing, obviously. It’s fun to see,” said Tigers manager A.J. Hinch.

The 39-year-old Cabrera is spraying line drives all over the field in the right situations, commanding the strike zone, even if the home runs aren’t falling like they did in his prime years. He is a marvel to behold, even for the opposition.

Robbie Grossman had a chat with Guardians third baseman Ernie Clement about Miggy. “He said, ‘That guy’s amazing, huh,’” Grossman recalled. “I said, ‘Only for the last 20 years.’ He has swung the bat so well this year, nothing surprises me at this point.”

“That guy has been around doing that for a long time,” said Guardians catcher Luke Maile after the walk-off. “He’s a really smart hitter. It wasn’t a bad pitch, but he had a good idea of what he wanted to do with it.”

This marked Cabrera’s 14th career walk-off hit, and he did it in style, breaking out his best Conor McGregor walk. He has raised his batting average 53 points in the last 13 games, making him 42 for 140 on the season, exactly .300.

The Tigers lead the game early before the Guardians jumped back into it with a three-run third inning. AJ Hinch thinks that the early lead put Detroit into the right mindset to close the book on the game.

“We’re a completely different team when we when we play from ahead. We can be a momentum team, too,” said Hinch. “That was nice in the first to get a run. I felt like we left a couple out there in that first inning and then scored a couple in the second and then it got pretty quiet. But anytime you’re at home…and you get off to a good start like that, it’s a nice way to start the series.”

But when it came to the way that the game finally played out, with Miggy’s walk-off hit, the manager had nothing but praise for Cabrera. “That was drawn up about as well as we could. Miggy is putting up such good at-bats and contributing. It’s fun to see. That’s a good win for us, coming off the win yesterday (at Minnesota) with another good performance. Miggy sent everybody home happy.”

Nobody can say how long it will last, but watching Cabrera hit the ball is one of the happiest things you can have in the game. Long may it continue.