Man, Miguel Cabrera is a good hitter, writes Joe Posnanski on mlb.com.
This is no news flash, of course, but he has now reached that level of consistency -- not unlike, say, Henry Aaron in the 1950s and 1960s -- where you don’t even think about it anymore. And because you don’t think about it, well, you don’t think about it, and then you come upon a Tigers game and you watch Cabrera in the batter’s box with his perfect balance, his calm, his controlled swing, and you remember: This guy is one of the best who ever lived at hitting a baseball.
Here’s a quick and easy way to tell how hard and consistently someone hits a baseball: Add up his home runs and doubles. See how often that number is at 70 or above. You might be surprised how rarely it happens. Mickey Mantle, for instance, only did it twice. One of those was in 1961, when he hit 70 on the nose with 54 homers and 16 doubles. Mantle’s doubles numbers are strikingly low. George Brett, as just one example of many, never reached 70.
