AL MVP Race: Why Miguel Cabrera Deserves to Win

While the Detroit Tigers had a difficult collapse from being just a half-game away from the White Sox in second place heading into the second half of the season to falling out of contention, it shouldn't take away from Miguel Cabrera's candidacy for the 2010 AL MVP award.

In fact, in a strange way, the freefall the Tigers suffered coming out of the gates actually serves to strengthen the argument that no player in the AL meant more to his team than Cabrera.

For it was Cabrera who continued to knock it runs, hit clutch home runs, and even score runs in bunches despite being one of the slower players in the AL as the Tigers suffered season-killing injuries to guys like Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Guillen, his only protection in the middle of the lineup.

Rookie Brennan Boesch cooled off from being another possible MVP candidate-caliber player in the first half and a rookie of the year lock to being one of the least effective hitters on the team almost overnight.

Despite these challenges and a lineup that shuffled young guys in and out all year, Cabrera, perhaps the leader in the clubhouse after suffering a high ankle sprain that will knock him out for the last few games of the year, finished with a .328 average, 38 home runs, and a league-leading 126 RBI to go with 111 runs, also tops in the AL. His 32 intentional walks are one shy of the AL all-time record behind Ted Williams as well and his .420 on-base percentage is the best in the AL.

It was a historic season any way you look at it for Cabrera in spite of tremendous odds and playing in a pitcher's ballpark in Comerica Park, which was once dubbed "Comerica National Park" for its tremendous size by former Tiger hitter Bobby Higginson.

Josh Hamilton of the Rangers, the next-closest MVP candidate, had one of his own as well with a .361 average. But he has 7 less home runs and 29 fewer RBI, played in 20 fewer games and plays for a team that scored 30 more runs than Detroit.

Hamilton had a fine season in his own right but he also had more protection in the Rangers' lineup and played in a division, the AL West, where the Rangers are only team that currently has a record over .500 contrasted with the AL Central which counts the Tigers, Twins, and White Sox as teams with winning records.

And then there's the intanglibles: Cabrera's presence, as illustrated by the intentional walks number, is what kept the Tigers respectable. His clutch hitting won the team numerous games and made the hitters around him better in a bigger way that Hamilton did, and it can easily be argued that the Tigers depend more on Cabrera than the Rangers depend on Hamilton.

While it's a close race between two historically great candidates, Cabrera deserves to be the top MVP candidate because he most closely fits the definition of what the award is all about, and that's not a slight on Hamilton, just a testament to how much Cabrera meant to the Tigers in 2010.

Sources: http://www.mlive.com/tigers/index.ssf/2010/09/injury_ends_tiger_slugger_migu.html
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/players/7163