NFL Tickets
It’s one thing to talk about a player’s personal results in Spring Training, but the game scoreboard for the teams? Those are just truly meaningless numbers.
Well … unless they’re such lop-sided numbers that they might be worth talking about anyway. Say, something like the 17-5 beating that the Toronto Blue Jays put on the New York Yankees on Thursday?
Okay, so maybe it still feels a little silly to be talking about a Grapefruit League win, even if the fact that the Blue Jays were up by a 16-1 score by the end of the third is at least worth mentioning. No, the Yankees didn’t exactly send out their best pitchers to the mound, but even so, that Toronto was able to string together that many runs in such a short time had its share of novelty value.
But was it a surprise? Hardly. Especially not in the case of Melky Cabrera, the offensive leader of the game.
Starting as the team’s DH and batting third, Cabrera had something of a breakout performance, pacing the offense with a 3-for-3 day that included a pair of doubles and four RBIs with a couple of runs scored.
You could probably say it was a long time coming too, as the team’s left fielder has successfully recorded a hit in every game he’s played since March, and is now 10-for-24 for the month. In fact, even if you count in February, there are only a couple of games in which Cabrera has gone without a hit in the 2013 Grapefruit League season.
So yes, he’s been more or less putting on a steady personal hit parade, which is exactly what the Blue Jays are hoping to get out of their No. 2 hitter on Opening Day. It’d probably be nice to see him draw a couple of walks, but I mean, spring training is a time to work on these things, right?
Besides, if he can maintain his high BABIP ways, Cabrera’s batting average should alleviate his walk rate, which has fluctuated between 8.3 percent to 5 percent over the last three seasons.
The home run hasn’t come yet, and given his history with the elephant in the room, I suppose you could question whether or not those numbers will resemble the career-best .170 ISO he had last season with the San Francisco Giants.
That said, Cabrera has already matched his doubles total from last spring (six) with roughly half the at-bats, so it’s not as though it’s likely that he’ll be a singles machine either.
And you know, even if he is, considering that it’s the speedy Jose Reyes hitting in front of him and the one-two punch of Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion behind, it won’t really matter what type of hit it is, as long as Cabrera can simply keep hitting and getting on base.
Luckily for the Blue Jays, he seems to be well on his way to taking his hit parade all the way into the regular season.
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