Miguel Cabrera reached the 3,000-hit milestone a couple of days ago and is now focused on his next goal. But let's not rush and first let's review which teams have been the favorite 'victims' of Cabrera's batting.
Cabrera has played in the MLB since 2003, played his first five seasons for the Florida Marlins until 2007, and was acquired by the Detroit Tigers in that year. At that time he had only 842 hits.
Fifteen years later, the Venezuelan player made it into the 3,000-hit club, an accomplishment that only 33 players in MLB history have achieved.
Four teams received more than 1,000 of Cabrera's total hits
The Detroit Tigers' division rivals are the teams Cabrera has hit the most against, by a wide margin. More than 1,000 of the +3,000 hits are split between them. This is because there are more games played between division rivals than against the rest of the league.
By checking and analyzing the official data on the MLB website, we can find a lot of information about the historic achievement. By putting the numbers in a graph as a data visualization, we make it easier to read and see how Cabrera's +3,000 hits are divided by team over his entire career.
One of the things we found is that Cabrera has hits against two teams that are no longer in the league: The Montreal Expos and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The Expos franchise was changed to Washington and since 2004 they are the Washington Nationals; on the other hand Tampa Bay changed its name from Devil Rays to just Rays in the 2008 season. And Cabrera batted against all teams, with the old and new names.
Using the Average instead of the number of hits, we can find something obvious: he had fewer innings against the two teams he has played for, but hitting well over .400 against them. That's why they appear at the top of this graphic.
Note: the official data has the Cleveland Indians and Cleveland Guardians as the same team, so you will only see "Cleveland" on both charts.
