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Miguel Cabrera's Second Half

By Tim Dierkes [September 22, 2008 at 9:04pm CST]

Anyone notice Miguel Cabrera's performance since July 1st?

He's hitting .310/.358/.634 with 25 HR, 77 RBI, and 46 runs in 284 ABs. It's a massive three-month stretch that projects out to at least .310-50-154-92 over a full season.

It's not that Cabrera was terrible for his first three months as a Tiger; he just couldn't meet the lofty expectations. Even in those off-months, he hit .281/.350/.459 with 11 HR, 48 RBI, and 37 runs in 303 ABs. Not terrible, but not close to worthy of an average draft position of 7.4. Like others, we were high on M-Cab, projecting a .322-33-119-109 line.

It would've been nice if Cabrera's first-half adjustment period (new team, position change) held down his overall line enough to make him an '09 sleeper. However, he's recovered to a .295-36-125-83-1 performance with a week left to go. It's a career-high in both HR and RBI for the 25 year-old, so he'll hardly fly under the radar in 2009.

I'm still hoping his ADP may stay the same or even get slightly worse, though. What do you think? Will Cabrera make it to the eighth pick in 2009? Players who could go earlier: Jose Reyes, Hanley Ramirez, Albert Pujols, Matt Holliday, Manny Ramirez (?), Grady Sizemore, Lance Berkman, David Wright, and Alex Rodriguez. That's probably the extreme case, M-Cab slipping to tenth.