All Hope Is Not Lost on Melky Cabrera

Poor Melky Cabrera. Last Friday, just days after turning 24, the Yankees center fielder was sent down to the minor leagues, which must have been hard to take, coming as it did in his third full year in the majors. Judging by my in-box, his reputation with the paying customers seems to be nearing the depths reached by Carl Pavano and Jeff Weaver.Worst of all is just how appallingly bad the man was up to the point of his demotion, which may have come as a surprise but was amply justified by his flailing wretchedness. In the month prior to his trip to the International League he hit .235 BA/.262 OBA/.284 SLG, right in line with the .226/.274/.293 mark he’d put up since a superb April, and if anything he looked worse than that at the plate. Anyone wondering what a major leaguer struck by a brain injury that fried every neuron having to do with hitting would look like can just cue up film of Cabrera’s summer.Horrified as the world might be by Cabrera’s lousy play, though, if he were a stock I’d buy as much as I could afford. You have to trust fundamentals, and even after the last few months his are still shockingly good.First, as manager Joe Girardi noted Friday, “You cannot forget how young Melky is.” Four years into his career, Cabrera’s date of birth is still arguably the single most important thing about him. The second most important thing about him is that he showed he could play well at a very young age; it’s difficult to overestimate how strong a predictor of eventual stardom that is. The third most important thing is that he’s a center fielder, and not just in name. Whatever terrors he visited upon spectators while hitting, Cabrera notably improved in the field this year, something the better defensive statistics picked up. The Fielding Bible’s plus/minus system, for instance, credits him as having been 10 plays better than an average center fielder this year.On their own, none of these three things would come near to outweighing Cabrera’s demonstrated ability to suck the life out of a lineup spot for months at a time, or the fact that he’s regressed at the plate in each of the last two years. The combination of the three, though, does. Cabrera’s age counts; what he did when he was 21 counts; the fact that he’s played well at a premium defensive position counts. He may no longer look like a potential building block player, as he did before the year or at the end of April, but that doesn’t mean he’s lost his chance of developing into one.Just to put his career in context, consider this. Counting this year, Cabrera’s career OPS, adjusted for park and league, is 84% of average, according to Baseball-Reference.com. Since integration, seven center fielders have hit at between 80% and 90% of average while racking up at least 1,000 plate appearances — Cabrera, Carlos Beltran, Johnny Damon, Curt Flood, Jay Johnstone, Dave Martinez, and Corey Patterson.Beltran and Damon, obviously, are first-rate players. They also had years every bit as bad as Cabrera’s when they were right around the same age. (Beltran managed to get sent all the way down to rookie ball the year he turned 24.) Flood, in addition to his heroic stand against the reserve clause, was also a genuinely great player who might have had a Hall of Fame career in different circumstances. Johnstone and Martinez weren’t of that caliber, but did have long, productive careers.The only worrying precedent here is Patterson, who was rushed to the majors, suffered from bad coaching, and is struggling to hit .200 this year, in the middle of what should be his prime. Even he, though, shouldn’t cause much fretting. His main problem is an extraordinarily undisciplined approach to the strike zone, and whatever Cabrera’s problems, that really isn’t one of them. Even so, he’s a quite useful player in a limited role, if not the All-Star he should have become.Given Cabrera’s cheap contract — he’ll be eligible for arbitration for the first time this winter — and given how good comparable players have turned out to be, there’s every reason not to give up on him. Happily, there’s little sign the Yankees are doing so. A trip to the minors shouldn’t be taken as a slap, but as a challenge; it worked wonders for Beltran, and might have saved Patterson’s career had it come at the right time. The talent is still there for Cabrera to be a star. All he has to do is play up to what he’s already done.tmarchman@nysun.com

All Hope Is Not Lost on Melky Cabrera

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