You Should Take Miguel Cabrera in the First Round

I’m not sure we think about first round picks properly in fantasy baseball. I think too often we worry too much about if the player selected will “return first round value” which means being a top 10, 12, 15 player (or however many teams are in the league, of course). The BaseballHQ Forecaster reviews first round picks every year and compares them to those who finished as first rounders by dollar value and it shows we are terrible at actually picking first rounders in the first round. Their look at the last 12 years showed a 34% success rate.

I look for more of a balance between upside and floor with my first round pick. Make no mistake, we’re talking very high floors here. I’m not going to take Kyle Seager in the first round just because he has established a strong floor of quality play, but I’m careful not to overvalue nebulous upside while eschewing a “boring” pick just because I have a reasonable idea of what to expect from him. It’s not so much “will this guy blossom into a first round stud”, but more “will he be a centerpiece asset (top 35 or so) with a reasonable shot at first round production” which brings us to Miguel Cabrera.

The fantasy baseball community’s general ageism and desire to find the next big thing have left Cabrera out of the first round in early mocks I’ve done or witnessed. In the first one I did, he went 20th! In the second, he went 19th to me. In Justin Mason’s mock, he went 15th to Justin. Coming off of 2015, I understood some of the reluctance to take Miggy with a top-5 pick, but he rebounded this year with his best effort since 2013: .316/.393/.563 with 38 HR, 108 RBI, and 92 R. Maybe the 0 SB has folks worried?

Even last year when he only played 119 games thanks to his only DL stint ever, he still led baseball with a .338 AVG and the AL with a .440 OBP. His 18 HR stick out for a guy who had averaged 32 per season through 2014, but a full season pace would’ve had him near the 25 he hit in 2014. Despite missing 43 games, he still finished 46th among hitters on ESPN’s Player Rater. But last year isn’t the issue. He was still a firm first rounder, even though he’d fallen from his top-5 perch.

So he goes out and puts up that filthy line with 20 more HR and 32 more RBI than 2015 (albeit in 39 more games) and falls out of the first round? A big part of his fall is admittedly the emergence of others, but are these Johnny-Come-Latelys really worth taking over Cabrera? Some of those JCLs I get, but others might need a closer look to see if they’re actually worth going ahead of Miggy on the basis of anything but age, namely Anthony Rizzo and Corey Seager.

Both are amazing players, no doubt, but better than Cabrera? Let’s look at the three over the last two seasons on a 650 PA pace:

I’m only looking at the last two years because Seager didn’t play before that and honestly, anything prior to then really slants things towards Cabrera and he obviously can’t be expected to put up the same prime-level numbers we saw in 2010-13 (.337/.425/.612, 39 HR, 127 RBI, 108 R on average). Seager just finished a brilliant first full season that’s sure to net the Rookie of the Year, but it wasn’t better than Cabrera’s 2016 and so he has to improve to be better than the veteran.

The SS v. 1B difference between Seager and Cabrera is likely a key factor for many, but the renaissance at shortstop makes that case less viable. The pool at shortstop has thickened while first base has experienced some thinning. How much growth can we really expect out of Seager? More RBI? OK I can see that, but Cabrera is a safe bet for 100 leaving Seager with 28 to gain.

The most we saw out of a #2 batter this year were Josh Donaldson’s 86 (specifically in the #2 spot). In 2015, Donaldson logged 113 as a #2 hitter, but that was with a historically great offense in Toronto. I think some believe Seager will add to his home run total, but it’s hardly a guarantee and would likely require a change in approach as he doesn’t put the ball in the air that much.

He did so just 29% of the time this year and 27% during his 2015 taste (113 PA). Only one of the 38 batters to pop 30 homers did so with a sub-30% FB rate: Ryan Braun (25%). Hell, only other was below 35% (Yasmany Tomas at 31%). We also know that growth isn’t linear for young players so even if you expect Seager to mold into a 30+ HR stud, it could be a year or two down the line. He’s still just going into his age-23 season. Make no mistake, he’s a star-level player who I’ll gladly roster on my team, but not ahead of Cabrera. I just don’t see the case.

Rizzo is probably an easier 1:1 to dissect since they both play first. It really only comes down to one category, though: batting average. Rizzo just hit a career-best .292 this year, boosting his career mark to .267. Cabrera could probably hit .267 left handed. He hit .316 this year, lowering his career average to .321. This is a landslide for Cabrera and the major reason that I can’t see Rizzo over him. Rizzo would need either to elevate into the 40-home run club (not impossible) or steal 17 bases again to make up the difference (very unlikely).

Those 17 swipes in 2015 represent 47% of his career total and apart from that season, he’s been an abomination on the bases with just a 61% success rate including 3-for-8 this year. He’s much more likely to stop running altogether than he is to repeat 2015. Rizzo is going to be a 27-year old in the heart of an incredible lineup so .280-30-100-100 is a safe bet (though he’s yet to eclipse 94 R). If you assume both are going to be in the 90-100 range in R and RBI, then you’re left looking at HR and AVG.

Rizzo has been 31-32 the last three years while Cabrera has bounced around at 25, 18, and 38, but even with the injury-shortened season factored in he’s still averaging 27 over those last three years with a peak of 38, higher than anything Rizzo has ever done. The AVG is a total cakewalk for Cabrera. He has established a firm mid-.300s BABIP that has yielded an AVG below .300 just twice in his career, the last time being 2008. That year, he hit .292, same as Rizzo’s career-high set this year.

There is a six-year age difference, I get it. But those six years don’t make Rizzo better and we just aren’t good enough at predicting when surges for younger players and falloffs for older players will come so making that the basis of a Rizzo over Cabrera pick seems rife with uncertainty. Why not just take the clearly better player? Short of injury, there doesn’t seem to be any way that Cabrera tanks your season. Now, I don’t really see a huge case for Rizzo tanking your season, either, but my contention is that he doesn’t inherently have more upside than Cabrera simply because he’s younger.

Miguel Cabrera: still a first round pick.