After an intra-office debate, my colleague Timothy P. Carney charitably acknowledged that New York Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom’s 2018 season (during which he only played once every five games or so), was not, in fact, the best single-player baseball season of the decade. The correct answer is obvious: Miguel Cabrera’s 2012 Triple Crown season.
Cabrera became the first Triple Crown player since man walked on the moon by finishing the regular season with a .330 batting average, 44 home runs, and 139 RBIs — leading the American League in all three categories. He also led the AL in slugging, OPS, and total bases. (To be fair, he also led MLB with the most at-bats resulting in a double play — nobody’s perfect!)
Cabrera’s Detroit Tigers won the AL Central Division, beat the Oakland Athletics in five games, and swept the New York Yankees to win their second pennant under manager Jim Leyland. (Cabrera then struck out looking as the final out of the San Francisco Giants’s World Series sweep over the Tigers — again, nobody’s perfect!)
For what it’s worth, deGrom’s Mets finished 77-85 in 2018. They did not make the playoffs.
The Triple Crown is incredibly rare — only 17 times has a batter achieved it. If another batter had joined the list of just 17 Triple Crown seasons in MLB history, they might have a case for the best single-player season of the decade (for comparison, there have only been 23 official perfect games). But they didn’t, so the award should go to Miguel Cabrera for his rare feat.
