Miguel Cabrera Nearly Out-Homered by Juan Pierre

Catchy headline, huh? And awfully misleading, too.

This afternoon, in advance of the highly-anticipated weekend series between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers, Scott Merkin, the White Sox beat writer for MLB.com, tweeted the following:

"Juan Pierre had one less homer than Miguel Cabrera in August"

Simple enough, right? And on it’s face, harmless enough as well. I assume that Merkin is simply trying to stoke the flames of this Tigers-White Sox series; obviously he’s smart enough to realize that comparing Cabrera to Pierre is not wise. What he tweeted, however, is 100 percent accurate.

For the month of August, Pierre homered once and Cabrera twice.

What Merkin didn’t tweet (or acknowledge when I tweeted this information back at him) is that while Pierre had an outstanding month (by his standards), Cabrera was an absolute monster by any standards.

Pierre posted a .313/.355/.374/.729 line for the month, continuing his torrid second half. Cabrera, on the other hand, had a line of .390/.454/.552/1.006 line for the month, despite hitting just two long balls. It was the third time this season that Cabrera has posted an OPS of over 1.000 in a month. It was the first time he had done so with fewer than seven home runs in that month. Cabrera’s wOBA for August was .430, the 14th highest mark in all of baseball last month and good for seventh best in the American League. Pierre’s wOBA was just .335 last month, good for ninth best among AL left fielders.

So no, Cabrera didn’t play longball very often last month, but he did a whole lot of other things very, very well. To compare his production to that of Pierre’s is just plain silliness. And one more reason to hate the White Sox, as if we needed any more.

Like what you see here and want to stay informed of the happenings at MCB? Make sure to follow me on twitter, like us on facebook, or grab our RSS feed.