Motor City Bengals All-Time Detroit Tigers Team: 3B Miguel Cabrera

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More than likely our All-Time Detroit Tigers third baseman will spend just two years at the position, but how could we not name Miguel Cabrera to Motor City Bengals’ All-Time Detroit Tigers team?

Before we proceed, let’s take a look back.

1B: Hank Greenberg

2B Charlie Gehringer

SS: Alan Trammell

Click through the slideshow to read our previous entries.

Cabrera will shift back to first base in 2014 after spending two seasons at the hot corner during Prince Fielder‘s brief tenure in Detroit. Certainly Miggy wasn’t the best defensive third basemen around, and the strain of the position may have hampered any possible recovery from various injuries down the stretch in 2013, but how can you knock those two years at third which included two MVP awards and the first Triple Crown in 45 years?

Haling from Venezuela, 20-year-old Cabrera burst on the scene with the Florida Marlins in 2003–making the jump all the way from Double-A. He would never return to the minors and instead would land in the clean-up spot for the soon-to-be World Champion Marlins. He helped to further the misery of the Chicago Cubs by pounding out three homers in the NLCS.

In 2005, Miggy hit over .300 for the first time (.323) and hit 33 homers for the second straight season. He was an NL All-Star from 2004 to 2007.

In one of the more lopsided trades in baseball history, the Florida Marlins, perhaps worried that Cabrera would command too much in future income, began shopping him around baseball. Many were interested, but the Detroit Tigers won the sweepstakes by shipping Andrew Miller, Dallas Trahern, Eulogio De La Cruz, Burke Badenhop, Cameron Maybin and Mike Rabelo to Florida for Miggy and Dontrelle Willis. Before the start of the 2008 season, the Tigers agreed to an eight-year, $152.3 million contract.

Miggy didn’t miss a beat changing leagues. While his average dipped below .300 for the first time in four seasons, he still managed to hit 27 homers and drive in 127. The following year began his current streak of .300 seasons, and nearly each season has seen that average rise.

He won the Triple Crown in 2012 with numbers of .330, 44 homers and 139 RBIs (all career highs). And yet thorough much of 2013, he was on a better pace than his final 2012 numbers. Ultimately, the injuries hampered him and he again finished with 44 homers, good for second in the AL, but won his third straight batting title with an average of .348.

No one knows what the future for Miguel Cabrera holds in Detroit. One of the best pure hitters of this generation will be eligible for free agency after the 2015 season. More than likely the Tigers will do all they can to hold on to him, but the then 33-year old is sure to command a pretty penny or two.

It’s worth noting that George Kell would have been the top pick for Tigers’ third basemen if not for Miguel’s incredible few years at the position.

We’ll round out the infield next week with catcher. This one is figuring to be quite a close vote between two Tigers’ greats. Tune in for the results!

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The best Detroit Tigers shortstop of all-time is Alan Trammell.

Alan Stuart Trammell was the second round pick of the Detroit Tigers in the 1976 draft. It didn’t take the San Diego native long to make his first appearance in the major leagues. On Sept. 9, 1977, in the second game of a double-header at Fenway Park, Trammell and a young second baseman named Lou Whitaker each made their major league debut.

The pair would go on to play together for 19 seasons. While his partner won the 1978 AL Rookie of the Year award (Tram finished fourth), Trammell hit nearly 100 points higher than in his limited action of 1977. His average reached .300 for the first time in 1980, and it netted him the first of six All-Star appearances.

As the Tigers began to contend in the American League East in the early 1980’s, Trammell’s plate production increased. In 1983, the Tigers won more than 90 games (92-70) for the first time since 1971 but finished a distant second place to the eventual World Champion Baltimore Orioles and, of course, we all know what happened in 1984. Those two seasons were among the best of Tram’s career. He notched double-digit home runs for the first time in his career (14 in both ’83 and ’84) and hit .319 and .314 respectively. He had a .351 average with three homers and nine RBIs in the 1984 postseason and won the World Series MVP.

After a couple off-years while battling injuries, Sparky Anderson asked a healthy Trammell to anchor the Tigers’ 1987 lineup and bat cleanup. He responded with the best year of his storied career, setting career highs with a .343 average, 28 homers and 105 RBIs. When it appeared the Tigers would miss out on the postseason after falling behind the Toronto Blue Jays in the standings, Tram came to life. He hit at a .416 clip in September, lifting the Tigers to an astonishing come-from-behind AL East title.

In shades of things to come, Trammell was robbed in the AL MVP voting that season, finishing second to Toronto’s George Bell.

Defensively, Trammell wasn’t thought of in the same sentence as defense-first guys like Ozzie Smith, but he was steady and rarely made miscues or cost his team runs with errors. He won five Gold Gloves during his career and, along with Whitaker, formed the longest continuous double-play combination in baseball history (19 years and more than 2,000 games).

In the latter portions of his career, Trammell battled numerous injuries which caused his production to ebb and flow, however he still batted over .300 three more times. Most expected Trammell to retire when Whitaker announced that the 1995 season would be his last, but Tram decided to give it one more go, playing a reduced roll for the awful 1996 Tigers. Tram spent time at third base, second base, left and center, in addition to shortstop and DH the year Detroit set a then-franchise record of 109 losses.

Seven years later, Trammell managed the worst team in American League history, the 2003 Tigers. The team bounced back from that terrible season and improved by nearly 30 games in 2004, but when the team regressed a bit in 2005, Trammell was fired. It’s worth nothing that even the best managers in baseball history could not have done anything with that 2003 team and, after winning the AL pennant in 2006, Jim Leyland thanked Alan Trammell for his help in turning the franchise around.

We’ve greatly covered Trammell’s continued Hall-of-Fame snub, so we’ll skip that for now. Most believe that he will certainly get in via the Veteran’s Committee, so how fitting will it be when Tram is (eventually) inducted into Cooperstown along with Lou Whitaker? It will happen. It’s just a matter of time.

Next week, we’ll look at the all-time best third basemen in Tigers’ history. The consensus choice of the Motor City Bengals’ staff is sure to surprise some of our readers!

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We name the organization’s top second sacker, Charlie Gehringer.

We’ve lamented the fact that Lou Whitaker may never make the Hall-of-Fame, but as great as he was, Charlie Gehringer was truly one of the best players in baseball history, and certainly one of the best second basemen of all time.

Gehringer had a long and distinct career in baseball, all with the Tigers. Born in Fowlerville, Charlie was a naive Michigander and would be the place he’d live all his life.

In the early 1920’s, Gehringer lettered in basketball, not baseball, at the University of Michigan, but his skills on the diamond were solid enough to grab the attention of Tiger Bobby Veach. In 1923, Veach brought Gehringer to Navin Field for a workout in front of player-manager Ty Cobb. The Tiger legend loved what he saw and convinced management to tender him a contact.

In his second full season in the big leagues (1927), Charlie became a star under new manager George Moriarty. In the years of Lou Gehrig‘s consecutive games streak, Gehringer was the Tigers’ Iron Man, playing every game from 1928 to 1930, 1933 to 1934, and 1936. He led the league in runs (131), hits (215), doubles (45), triples (19) and steals (19) in 1929.

On the defensive side, he was a very good defender and spent more than 1,000 games forming a keystone combination with shortstop Billy Rogell.

Gehringer was the lone Tigers’ representative in the very first All-Star Game, held at Comiskey Park in Chicago in 1933, and led the team in average in the pennant-winning seasons of 1934 and 1935. He hit .371 in 1937, which was a career high and earned him the MVP.

Gehringer remained a force for the Tigers through their pennant winning season of 1940, hitting .313. In 1941, he hit nearly 100 points off his average and found himself on the bench in 1942. Following that season, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy until 1945. He considered making a comeback at the age of 41, but ultimately decided against it.

In 16 full-seasons in the majors, Charlie hit under .300 just four times (his first full year and his final two). In the peak of his career, from 1927 to 1940, the only sub-.300 season was 1932 when he hit .298. He finished with a career average of .320, 2,839 hits, 184 homers and 1,427 RBIs.

Charlie was a six-time All-Star, won three pennants, one World Series, an MVP, and batting title. His number two was retired alongside Greenberg’s number five in a ceremony at Tiger Stadium in 1983, and he was elected to the Baseball Hall-of-Fame in 1949 with more than 85 percent of the vote.

It is for all these reasons that Charlie Gehringer is named to the Motor City Bengals’ All-Time Detroit Tigers team, and was another unanimous pick by staff.

Honorable mention goes to Whitaker (of course), and Dick McAulliffe.