Rewind back to 2006 for a second. Melky Cabrera was considered the next great New York Yankees’ prodigy. At the age of just 22, this talented youngster hit the ground running in The Big Apple. He posted a .280 average with seven homers and 50 RBI’s in 130 games for the eventual AL East Champion’ Yankees.
MLB filed the following scouting report on Cabrera prior to that 2006 season.
"Cabrera’s ability at the plate is his ticket and any success he has there will ultimately provide his full-time ticket to the big leagues. His ability to handle off-speed pitching is a plus. He relies on quick wrists and a good eye to recognize the breaking ball though it wasn’t until this season that he consistently showed an ability to keep up with a plus fastball. A little more patience at the plate wouldn’t hurt."
He was considered a top 10 prospect in New York at the time. The future couldn’t have been brighter for this multi-talented player.
Cabrera became a full-timer for New York the following season and seemed to progress. He compiled 40 extra-base hits and 73 RBI’s in 2007. The power didn’t seem to be there, however, as he hit only eight homers.
2008 saw Cabrera struggle a great deal. He hit under .250 and drove in just 37 runs in 414 at-bats. It was becoming increasingly clear that the talented player might not have a home in New York. Contact was never an issue for Cabrera, it was all about him not being able to drive the ball to the opposite field or to center field for that matter. His only power was provided when pulling the ball to either side of the plate depending on what pitcher he was going up against.
He did hit 13 homes for New York in 2009, his final season with the Yankees. However, he just didn’t seem to be much more than an average, bottom-of-the-lineup type of hitter. Cabrera went on to record 41 extra-base hits that season in nearly 500 at-bats for an average of one every 12 at-bats.
Cabrera was then shipped to the Atlanta Braves following 2009. He didn’t do much with a new shot either. He batted just .255 with four homers and 42 RBI’s in 458 at-bats. His extra-base hit ratio seemed to get even worst. Cabrera spent just one season in Atlanta before being released and signing with the Kansas City Royals.
At this point it was becoming readily apparent that Cabrera was going to amount to nothing more than a fourth outfielder on a good hitting baseball team.
Then everything changed. Cabrera bulked up a bit and started to possess a tremendous amount of power for Kansas City in 2010. He hit .305 with 18 homers and 87 RBI’s, both career-highs at this point. Cabrera’s 67 extra-base hits also a personal best. In fact, his extra-base hit ratio went from nearly 14 per at-bat in 2009 to under 10 the following season.
After just one season in Kansas City, he was shipped to the San Francisco Giants. Well, the rest is pretty much history. Cabrera helped the National League gain home field advantage in the World Series by winning the All-Star Game MVP. He was also leading the league in batting before all hell broke loose in mid-August. Cabrera was suspended 50 games for testing positive for Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDS).
Immediately following his suspension, it was reported by The New York Daily News that Cabrera had set up a fake website in July in an attempt to deceive MLB during the appeals process. The site attempted to explain away the positive drug test by saying there was a natural product that created a false positive. No such product exists and MLB officials were on to the scam relatively quickly.
Yes, this was an embarrassing situation for Cabrera and the San Francisco Giants, who would go on to win the World Series without his services.
Cabrera, who signed a one-year, $6 million contract with San Francisco last offseason after being traded from Kansas City, immediately became a free agent once the 2012 World Series ended. On Thursday, he became one of the first high-price free agents to ink a deal. Cabrera signed a two-year, $16 million contract with the Toronto Blue Jays.
Now the questions begin to arise. Was Cabrera financially rewarded for cheating? When did he start using Performance Enhancing Drugs? Was it during his breakout 2011 campaign with the Kansas City Royals?
If you take a look at the statistics I provided above, common sense seems to indicate that Cabrera did something between his 2009 struggles in Atlanta and breakout 2010 season with the Royals.
Cabrera never made more than $3 million in a season before signing that contract with San Francisco last offseason. He has since received $22 million in guaranteed money. MLB contracts are guaranteed, so it doesn’t matter if he plays one game or two seasons in Toronto, Cabrera makes that $16 million barring some sort of contractual structure that doesn’t seem to exist in the mainstream in MLB.
Was Cabrera given a $22 million reward for cheating? If so, how does this look for a league that has been under fire since the whole Steroid scandal of the last two decades? I don’t have an answer to this and will not pretend to know when Cabrera started to used PEDs. I will say that statistical analysis of his career suggests that he started using these drugs immediately prior to the 2010 season in Kansas City. Of course that is just pure conjecture on my part.
In other professions, you cheat and you are done. Lawyers are disbarred for bending the rules in their practice, politicians are forced out of office for corruption and the list goes on. Why not professional sports? Why not just prove a point that this type of cheating will not be allowed in a sport that has a history of it?
What about the fans? Don’t we deserve more? After all, you dole out your hard-earned money to go watch your favorite team play. That money is then indirectly used to pay the players. How do you feel about giving Cabrera money out of your pocket to cheat and use drugs? Has he earned the right to do that?
MLB owners could have stepped up with a united front and not given Cabrera the light of day this offseason. They could have easily forced him to work on a minor league contract before rebuilding his reputation. Instead, Rogers Communications and the Toronto Blue Jays decided to throw $16 million his way. Yes, 16 million different reasons why MLB could care less about the legitimacy of the league and 16 million reasons why baseball is currently a melting pot for drug abuse.
How do you feel as a Blue Jays fan with this signing? What would you feel like if your team had given him this type of money? I am pretty sure there are two different answers to these two vastly different questions. One thing is damn sure, the culture of Steroids, corruption and double standards seem to afflict MLB as much today as it did during the years of Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds.
More importantly, what does this tell the youngsters playing baseball in little league diamonds around the United States? What about high school athletes attempting to get a proverbial leg up when it comes to college recruiting or the MLB Draft?
You cannot tell me that these impressionable kids are not looking at this situation and putting two and two together. They must have read or heard about Cabrera’s suspension back in August. Now they are seeing news break that he received $16 million just a few short months later. What type of signal does this send to those kids? Maybe, it is okay to cheat and use drugs as long as your own bottom line is positively impacted by it.
That is the sad reality and executives around the league seem content with it.
Are you?