San Francisco Giants Outfielder Melky Cabrera Brings Career Year into Question

San Francisco Giants outfielder Melky Cabrera certainly provided more fuel for those inclined to believe that performance-enhancing drugs can turn ordinary baseball players into extraordinary ones.

Cabrera has undergone a career metamorphosis over the past two seasons, to an All-Star performer from a career spare part released by the Atlanta Braves after the 2010 season because of a troubling combination of production that wasn’t up to par and a laissez-faire attitude about the game.

How bad was Cabrera’s 2010 season? He finished with an OPS of .671 and his wins above replacement rating was -0.5. He was one of the worst position players in baseball.

To that point in a career that began with a late-season call-up to the New York Yankees in 2005, Cabrera was a .267 lifetime hitter with 40 home runs, 270 RBI and an OPS of .707.

The Braves certainly had higher expectations for Cabrera, who was 25 at the time. Cabrera was part of the trade that sent right-hander Javier Vazquez to the Yankees, who were looking to shore up their starting group after capturing the World Series title with a three-man rotation in the playoffs, leaning on CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Andy Pettitte.

The Kansas City Royals, always looking for talent on the cheap, took a one-year, $1.25 million flier on Cabrera and he rewarded them with a career year in 2011, hitting .305 with 18 home runs and 87 RBI. He was also fourth-best in the American League with 201 hits and finished in the top 10 in the MLB in batting average, runs scored, total bases, doubles and triples.

The Royals knew Cabrera would be due a big payday and traded him to the Giants last November for left-hander Jonathan Sanchez and Double-A pitcher Ryan Verdugo.

Cabrera avoided arbitration by signing a one-year, $6 million contract in January and was having a huge year for the Giants, riding a .379 average on balls put in play to a .346 batting average, second in the National League behind Pittsburgh Pirates’ All-Star Andrew McCutcheon, and was leading the league with 159 hits and 84 runs scored.

His OPS this year is a career-best .906—a whopping 235 points higher than his mark with Atlanta two seasons ago. Cabrera had also earned the MVP award at last month’s All-Star Game in his first appearance in the league's showcase event.

That all came crashing down on Wednesday when it was announced that Cabrera would be suspended for 50 games for failing a test for performance-enhancing drugs.

To his credit, I suppose, Cabrera didn’t blame a tainted supplement, a mysterious stranger, a CIA-worthy conspiracy theory against him or the FedEx guy. Instead, Cabrera’s admission of guilt was just as big a surprise as the positive test itself.

But it had a bit of an air of resigned satisfaction to it, something along the lines of, “I’ll take my licks now but man, what a great ride it was!”

Set to become a free agent this fall, Cabrera could have been in line for a mega-deal somewhere in the low nine figures. Given this latest news bringing his entire career revival into question, I can’t see any team taking more than a one- or two-year chance at a bargain price.

The Giants, to the credit of general manager Brian Sabean, were proactive in making a deal at the waiver trade deadline to bring in outfielder Hunter Pence from the Philadelphia Phillies after rumors surfaced late last month about Cabrera’s alleged involvement with performance-enhancers.

At least one columnist on this site, Rick Weiner, was smart enough to connect the dots between Cabrera’s drug test and the Pence deal. Even though the Giants weren’t officially informed of Cabrera’s positive test until Wednesday, the rumors certainly could have provided San Francisco with the incentive to add another bat.

Cabrera flatly denied any involvement with PEDs following a tweet from a mysterious Twitter user on July 27 linked him to a positive test. As it turns out, that early report appears to be more leak than rumor.

Since testing began at the major league level in 2005, Cabrera is the third Giant to be either dumb or arrogant enough to get caught with his fingers on the syringe.

Catcher Eliezer Alfonso drew a 50-game suspension in 2008 and reliever Guillermo Mota was suspended earlier this year for 100 games after his second offense. No team in baseball has had more positive results at the major league level in that span.

The Giants will find it hard to replace Cabrera’s production in a lineup that struggled at times this year to score runs even with him in the lineup. But don’t shed too many tears for San Francisco, which gave up a below-average major-league pitcher to gain the best four-and-a-half months of Cabrera’s career.

Not a bad trade-off, even if those months turned out to be merely the best supplemental help Melky Cabrera could buy.