So, I got really interested in how Jose Cabrera managed to hit so consistently for such a long time. It wasn’t just about seeing the highlights; I wanted to understand, you know, what was actually going on with his swing, his approach year after year.
My Little Project: Breaking it Down
I started this little personal project. Wasn’t anything official, just me trying to figure things out. First thing I did was pull up a bunch of old game footage. I mean hours of it, going back through different seasons. I wasn’t looking for just home runs, but regular at-bats, different situations.
I grabbed a notebook and started jotting things down. Simple stuff really:
- How did his stance look in 2005 versus 2015?
- What kinds of pitches did he seem to wait on?
- How did he handle inside pitches compared to outside ones?
I even tried setting up a basic spreadsheet. Nothing fancy, just columns for the year, maybe the pitcher type, pitch location (guessed from the video), and the result. It was slow work, trying to categorize things just by watching replays. Sometimes the camera angles weren’t great either, making it tough to see the details I wanted.
What I Noticed
After spending a good chunk of time on this, a few things stood out to me, just my own observations, mind you. His power was obvious, yeah, but what struck me was his adaptability. His swing didn’t look exactly the same over two decades. You could see small adjustments, maybe opening up his stance a bit more later on, or how he handled the shift.
It wasn’t just one magic thing. It seemed like a combination of incredible hand-eye coordination, sure, but also a really smart approach. He seemed to understand situations, what the pitcher was trying to do. And that consistency, hitting for average and power, it wasn’t flashy all the time, just steady work.
Wrapping Up
This whole exercise didn’t make me a baseball scout or anything. It was just a way for me to appreciate the game on a different level. It took time, and honestly, sometimes it felt tedious trying to find the right clips or make sense of my own notes. But it definitely made watching him play, especially later in his career, much more interesting for me. You start to see the little things, the adjustments, the experience showing through. It was a satisfying little project, just digging into the details of a player I admired.
