Tension is nonexistent, for June’s only just sprouted. Like they’re kids caught in competition, you watch a pair distance themselves from the pack, their stats beginning to blossom. Nothing to sweat over, yet appealing to keep an eye on.

The future comes fast, and Baltimore’s Chris Davis joins Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera as the duo of front runners for the face of it. The goal in reach? The MLB’s eminent Triple Crown award. Until Cabrera led the big league in home runs, batting average, and RBIs last season, not a player—not Sosa, not McGwire, not even Bonds—has met such a feat since Carl Yastrzemski did in 1967. Talk about being rare; this is steak you could’ve sworn had a heartbeat.

The race between these two has shown every making to be a hit-for-hit fight to the finish. Hits in the batter’s box, that is. Amidst it, there are many unassuming similarities, along with polarized differences to match their near identical statistics—probably more than you’d think.
With college for each an endeavor never met, they’ve chosen the role of the slugger over the scholar. Living three years apart, 27 (Davis) and 30 (Cabrera), both can look back on it and agree the price was right. Each has comfortably plateaued the million dollar mark, yet one check to the bank stomps the other like a shoe to an ant. Cabrera’s salary is nearly seven times more than that of Davis’.

Davis, holding a pupil-popping .688 slugging percentage, even dropped from .797 a week earlier, leads the league among players with multiple hits, making him, at this point, the better all-around hitter. Cabrera, who leads the league with 65 RBIs, over a dozen more than Davis, flat out brings runners all around the diamond. In a way, they both bring it all around.
Cabrera is a set more sizable. Davis steps in at 6’3”, 230; Cabrera goes 6’4”, 240.

Davis, only in his maturing fifth year in the league, is taking notes in Mr. Cabrera’s class, whose tenured resume holds a decade under his belt. Eight years ago, Davis was in his backyard, playing for Navarro Junior College in Texas for the parents, cars speeding by, and scorekeepers being paid to be there. Cabrera was busy cranking out his path to 33 homers for the Marlins down in South Beach in front of 23,000 every night. Davis would have to pay $30 to see nine innings of him with his binoculars, all while dabbing a nose bleed.
Cabrera steps into his batter’s box like a president does his podium, a king does his throne. A right-handed hitter, he stays in a balanced crouch. The boulder shoulder drops, the left knee yanks up, and four tons of force pummels a fastball, the bat swinging quicker than the flap of a housefly. Forget the hyperbole; Sports Science proved it. Davis stays planted in a southpaw, redwood-straight stance, his bat like a bobber in a calm pond. The fish yanks it when the whistling ball meets the face of the plate. 34 percent of the time, he’s a keeper at some base or plate.
Having had to transition from the one-dimensional, couple-steps-and-snag duty of first base all the way to the opposite corner, third base, last year, Cabrera has had to drop the excess pounds. A reported 20 to 25 pounds he’s dropped during the season of hibernation and snow. Pretty impressive. Davis is staying put at first, and given that he’s stolen zero bases so far, two less than Cabrera, staying quicker than Howie Mandel with germs behind him is harder to see than where these two can crush the ball.

Statistics continue to inch these two players closer to the Triple Crown, possibly awarded by the end of September. Here’s the rankings thus far. Chris Davis: .338 batting average (rank: 5th), 21 home runs (rank: 1st), 56 RBIs (rank: 3rd). Miguel Cabrera: .358 batting average (rank: 1st), 18 home runs (rank: 3rd), 69 RBIs (rank: 1st). Not to forget, Cabrera is second in the MLB in intentional walks, Davis third.

Davis’ Orioles, as of June 14, boast a 38-29 record, second in the AL East only to the Red Sox. Cabrera’s Tigers are 36-28, leading the AL Central. So it was quite fitting to compare their performances in a three-game series against each other’s own respected teams last week.
With Max Scherzer pitching for Detroit, Miguel Gonzalez for Baltimore, Cabrera and Davis each went two for four, but twice Davis was struck out in an Orioles’ win. The next day, against Jason Hammel, Cabrera made Oriole Park one baseball poorer, hitting his second home run of the series. Despite going one for four, he brought in four runs. Davis, on the other hand, went one for four as well, but struck out three times in a Tigers feast, Detroit winning 10-3. In the third and final game of the matchup, Cabrera again went one for four, striking out only for the first time in the series. Davis, meanwhile, went a solid two for four with a home run.

In the series, Cabrera struck out only twice to Davis’ six. Ironically, Cabrera also had six RBIs to Davis’ two. You do the math.

Sure, a brief series can only begin to show the theme of a season not even half way in, but it gave people a glimpse. With the Orioles and Tigers fighting for high spots in the American League, 3rd and 5th, respectively, an individual matchup only adds to the significance. History being chased, the path into late September should be compelling to see play out on so many levels.