Detroit Tigers: 5 more Miguel Cabrera milestones

Miguel Cabrera Milestone: 600 Doubles

Doubles get no respect. They are the middle child of baseball events. We get it, they aren’t as cool as home runs, or as exciting as triples. But, despite being clearly better than plain old singles, no one seems to care about doubles. Most baseball fans can name the magic number for hits in a season, or a career. Same goes for home runs. But can you name the single-season leader in doubles? How about the career leader? And what’s the magic number for doubles in a season?

We rest our case.

If you’re curious, the all-time leader in doubles is Tris Speaker, with 792. Pete Rose, Stan Musial, and Ty Cobb are the only other players to top 700 for their career. And the single-season leader is Earl Webb, who was 33 and had played fewer than 300 career games when he randomly hit 67 doubles for the 1931 Boston Red Sox. He’d hit just 33 more doubles in his career.

Only six players have ever topped 60 doubles in a season, and two of them are Detroit Tigers. Hank Greenberg hit 63 in 1934, and two years later Charlie Gehringer hit 60. Nick Castellanos has the 10th highest single-season total ever, with 58 in 2019. Detroit Tigers fans should claim ownership of doubles like they do with coney dogs and Vernors, but alas.

So no one particularly cares about Miguel Cabrera sitting at 591 career doubles right now, which ranks 20th all time. With nine more two-baggers he can be just the 18th player in MLB history to hit the 600 mark. At that point he’ll be just the 5th player with 500 career home runs and 600 career doubles, joining Henry Aaron, Barry Bonds, David Ortiz, and Albert Pujols. Miggy will probably hit 2-3 more doubles this season, and hit the 600 mark roughly around the time he nets his 3,000th hit. He’ll then join Aaron and Pujols as the only batters ever with 3,000 hits, 600 doubles, and 500 home runs. That’s an awful lot of bases.

Speaking of which…