From time to time, fans and writers get the idea into their heads that baseball isn’t about star hitters.

The storyline is already in place should the Florida Marlins make a serious run at the pennant this year: A hard working young team overcoming star-studded Atlanta, Philadelphia, and New York through playing the game the right way: being solid one through 25, with good pitching and defense.

No doubt, pitching and defense will be important to the Marlins’ season. Like everyone else, I expect that the closer their young trio of Josh Beckett, A.J. Burnett, and Dontrelle Willis comes to pitching 600 innings, the higher the Marlins will finish in the standings.

However, should the Marlins beat out three other good teams for the division, they will probably do so behind their big bats, and not their young pitchers. The Marlins had fine pitching last year – better, actually, than they’re likely to have this year – and didn’t do much. Even if Beckett and Burnett fulfill all their potential, it’s hard to see exactly how they will make up for the 350 innings of 3.00 ERA ball that Brad Penny and Carl Pavano gave the team last year before leaving town. The real keys to the team’s season are first baseman Carlos Delgado and, especially, left fielder Miguel Cabrera.

Cabrera is, along with Mets third baseman David Wright, one of the two most valuable young players in baseball right now. There are practically no limits on what he can be expected to do. For a hint at the kind of talent he has, compare his record through age 21 to that of Henry Aaron at the same age in the chart to the right.

Despite what you might think, Cabrera isn’t receiving much of a benefit from playing in a high-offense era – the National League averaged 4.64 runs per game last year, and 4.53 in 1955, when Aaron was 21. Cabrera’s park decreased offense by 5%; so did Aaron’s. Statistically, the two are more comparable to each other as 21-year-olds than they are to any other players.

The similarities don’t end there. Aaron came up as an infielder, and was pushed to the outfield by the presence of Eddie Matthews and a solid Braves middle infield. But he played 27 games at second in 1955 with fine defense, and played about 10% of his career in center field. Cabrera is a third baseman who played creditably there in 2003, and has been pushed to the outfield in deference to veteran Mike Lowell.

Both also contributed to championship teams at an early age. When Aaron was 23, he won the MVP award and the Braves won the World Series; at 20, Cabrera helped drive the Marlins into the playoffs with 12 home runs in half a season’s worth of at-bats after being called up to replace an injured Lowell, then hit another four home runs during the Marlins’ October drive to the world championship.

By making the comparison, I’m not at all suggesting that Cabrera is likely to be a player of Aaron’s caliber. From the time he was 21 until he was 37, Aaron had an MVP-caliber season every single year. He was often better than that, sometimes quite a lot better, while facing racial hatred of the kind that no player today has to face.

There’s also the fact that a statistical comparison only explains so much. For every Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, and Ducky Medwick to whom young Cabrera favorably compares through his first two seasons, there’s a Ruben Sierra or Dick Kokos to remind one that just as there are those rare players who peak in their late 30s, there are those who peak before they’re old enough to drink.

The difference in the two players’ athleticism is instructive. Aaron is usually thought of mainly as a home-run hitter, but he was a complete player who won three Gold Gloves and stole 240 bases in his career. It’s not clear that he would have developed into the hitter he did if he had played a more demanding defensive position, but he almost certainly could have played third base or center field through his career.

Cabrera, on the other hand, isn’t fast, and has a much different build than Aaron did at the same age. As Aaron matured, he retained enough speed to have value in the field and on the bases; Cabrera will likely end up making nearly all of his contributions at the plate.

One of the amazing things about watching Cabrera is the contrast between the upper- and lower-half of his body. Below the waist he looks like a statue of a Greek god, with calves the size of footballs; above it, he still looks like a college freshman waiting for his body to fill in, with a big, goofy grin and hands into which his arms haven’t grown yet. Forget about the skills he’s still absorbing while playing in the majors at such an age; Cabrera could wake up one day with an extra few pounds of muscle and an extra few miles per hour of bat speed the same way I woke up one day when I was 22 and found I’d grown two inches.

When Aaron was 22, he hit .328 with 74 extra-base hits. If Cabrera does that this year – and it’s not much of a stretch to think he will – he’ll be a serious, though probably little-noticed, MVP candidate. The back-to-back combination he forms with Delgado is a left-right pair in the heart of the order to rival Philadelphia’s Jim Thome and Bob Abreu as the best in the division.

The attention may be on Beckett and Burnett, but it’s the brightest young star this side of Albert Pujols who’s going to decide the Marlins’ chances, and I wouldn’t bet against him.