Talk:Miguel Cabrera/GA3

GA Review
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Nominator: 15:24, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Wizardman (talk · contribs) 20:50, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to give this a review. I do want to say though, as a caveat, it's been years since I've done a review, and that combined with the significance of the subject means this review will probably take a few weeks. I don't see any major red flags on a surface look, and the concerns of GA2 appear to be addressed, so that's a good starting point. Wizardman 20:50, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Image review: The images are all relevant to the article and are appropriately licensed. The only issue I came across is that the Keith Allison ones lead to 404 pages on Flickr (spotchecked two and Internet Archive has no record). However I've used his pictures in articles plenty before so I know they were appropriately licensed at the time, and they can't be moved from a CC-BY to a full copyright since that's not how that works, so I'll let that minor issue slide. Wizardman 20:56, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Source review: A spotcheck will come later but here's some issues to clean up to start:
 * Not sure what Ref #1 is ("Miguel Cabrera, wonderful story – Líder en deportes") - While Lider itself appears to be reliable, the link goes to a blocked translation service, so either way that needs to be repaired (if the original link isn't in english that's fine, just use that).
 * Ref #5 ("ESPN The Magazine – ESPN") just has that as the title rather than whatever the article actually is. Since the link just redirects to the ESPN home page that will need fixing.
 * Ref #28 (Tigers lock up Cabrera for eight years...) needs a publisher and author
 * Ref #31 ("Miguel Cabrera gets A.L. Player of the Month honors") needs replacing. While B/R has improved in recent years, in 2008 it was still in "anyone can write for them" mode, making the link unreliable, and it gives a 404 error anyway.
 * Refs #84 and #114 - same issue
 * Ref #36 (2009 WBC rosters) needs a publisher
 * Ref #42 (first 3 HR game) should just be removed. Facebook isn't a reliable source, but luckily ref 43 covers that sentence.
 * Ref #46 (out rest of year) - SB Nation has the same issue as B/R. Has its moments, but especially early on when anyone could write for them reliability was an issue. Replace.
 * Refs #60, #68, and #229 - same issue
 * I'm not sold on Ref #49 (motor city bengals) on reliability either, and since there's 3 refs for that sentence already I would just remove.
 * Refs #58, #79, #92, and others - Bless You Boys is just SB Nation under a slightly different name so the above issue remains. In the case of both SB and BR I would base it on author reliability rather than the site itself. If you can find something confirming the reliability of the authors then that would suffice as opposed to replacing.
 * Ref #59 (Sports Illustrated/CNN) is a deadlink, since sadly SI is infamous for constantly moving their links and leaving no redirect targets. If possible find the new link, since there's not quite enough listed in that ref to just remove the URL (would like an author added as well).
 * Ref #65 ("All-Star rosters at") I think part of the title is missing. I would have just added it but the link redirects to the home page. It's at this
 * Ref #85 (Miguel Cabrera hits FROZEN 350th Home Run as a Tiger) just goes to a Youtube video. Certainly there's a stronger source available than that.
 * Ref #130 ("Miguel Cabrera hits 500th career double") - this just goes to an unreliable blogspot link, replace.
 * Ref #215 ( "Miguel Cabrera Awards by Baseball Almanac".) is a duplicate of Ref #17 - combine

There's a fairly significant amount of linkrot in this article. See [https://link-dispenser.toolforge.org/analyze/Miguel_Cabrera this link, and fix what you can under the links that could be down, as most of them are just redirecting to the home page. Also a lot of the refs for the same websites have different formatting (i see MLB.com, MLB, Major League Baseball, etc.) but that's a much smaller issue than the ones above, so I wouldn't worry about it for now. I'm stopping here for now until the reference issues are at least partially addressed. Wizardman 21:31, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Early life / minor league career:
 * " teaming with future major leaguers Adrián González and Dontrelle Willis." He may have but that source doesn't notate that, replace with one that does.
 * "manager Bill Plummer moved Cabrera from shortstop to third base." needs a citation
 * This section is mostly referenced to the Baseball-Reference main page when it should actually be referenced to the B-R Minor leagues page.
 * "At the request of the Marlins coach Ozzie Guillén, Cabrera made the transition from shortstop to third base. " This is contradicted a couple sentences earlier, which one wanted him to do the position change?
 * I'd actually get rid of the multiples Gonzalez and Willis references entirely, as it feels overly tangential for an article that's lengthy enough on the player's own merits as is.
 * "In April, he hit .402, and by June his average stood at .365 with 10 homers and 59 RBIs before being called up to the majors." The reference doesn't note the April .402 part.

I'll go through the rest of the article over the next week or so, but if I'm being honest I'm leaning towards an outright fail when this is done, because there's a significant amount that needs to be changed already and I've only scratched the surface. Wizardman 22:24, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Florida Marlins:
 * "Cabrera hit a walk-off home run in his first major league game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, following Billy Parker in 1972 and Josh Bard in 2002 as the third player since 1900 to hit a game-winning home run in his big-league debut." needs citation
 * "Cabrera rapidly established himself, as his stellar play in July made him the Marlins' cleanup hitter." definitely needs cite, or possible removal if you can't find a cite that notes both those points.
 * 2003 jumps from the regular season to the world series, then back to the NLDS/NLCS. I'd rewrite the section to flow better chronologically.
 * "including clutch home runs in Game 1 and Game 7 that gave the Marlins crucial leads" needs citation
 * "On April 20, 2004, Cabrera recorded his 100th career hit, an RBI single in the seventh inning against Roberto Hernández." this feels overly trivial to have in the article. 1k/2k/3k sure but I wouldn't go beyond that. If you feel otherwise and want to keep it then at least add a citation.
 * For being an everyday starter, 2004 and 2005 feel short especially given how much is written for each season later on. Were there any season highlights of note?
 * "Cabrera's 33 home runs made him the youngest player in Major League Baseball history with back-to-back 30-homer seasons, at 22 years, 143 days. Albert Pujols performed the feat at 22 years, 223 days." needs citation. I'm trying not to cause citation overkill in the article but I'm surprised at a good amount of this being unsourced.

Overall this section isn't too bad, those eyeballing the Tigers I feel like there's going to be a fair amount of content that really isn't needed that we can clean up. Wizardman 17:13, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Personal life: Yes I know I'm going out of order but since this section is shorter I figure I'll tackle it now. Never been a fan of personal life sections but that's personal preference.
 * The main issue here is the Venezuelan Crisis section feels weird. While there's a place for it in the article, it feels like undue weight and is written rather poorly currently. Stuff like "As one of Venezuela's most celebrated baseball icons, Cabrera's vocalizations on the crisis portray a notable shift," is unnecessary there, as one example. Rather than split hairs I would just say this needs a full rewrite.
 * The post-playing career section is fine at least. Granted it's only one sentence, but since he just retired that's understandable. Wizardman  17:24, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Detroit Tigers: I'm not going to go through this section with a fine-toothed comb, but there's plenty to address just on what I did catch.
 * Overall, there's a lot of one-sentence paragraph strewn throughout this section. Combining sentences is easy enough but make sure the article is still flowing when doing so.
 * I remember the trade being a very significant one when it happened. Adding something about Cabrera being the centerpiece of it would be beneficial here, and it says as such in the source so no further sourcing would be needed.
 * "The deal was also the largest in Tigers history at the time, surpassing the five-year, $75 million contract signed by Magglio Ordóñez in 2005 (it was later surpassed in 2012 when Prince Fielder signed a nine-year, $214 million deal) Cabrera earned $11.3 million in 2008 and was to receive an average of $20 million per year through 2015." The way this is worded feel like way too much of a run-on trying to over-cram in information. I'd rewrite and would probably remove the Fielder contract stuff.
 * "Cabrera had already made seven appearances at first, the first appearances at the position of his career." I'm not entirely sure what this is trying to say. Just the previous sentence noting the position move suffices, this can be removed.
 * "The lack of a strong #5 hitter to follow Cabrera in the Tigers' lineup also resulted in him drawing a career-high 89 walks," I'd remove the first part since none of the sources state that and that's editorializing a bit too much.
 * "Cabrera was named the American League Player of the Month for August. Cabrera batted .356 (36-for-101) with five doubles, 11 home runs, 31 RBIs, 17 runs scored, and 13 walks in 27 games to claim his fourth career Player of the Month Award and his second of the 2013 season," we don't need the full statistical breakdown here,
 * 2014 has the same issues as 2013 above. Noting a player of the month accolade is perfectly fine, getting into the weeds of all the stats and noting other players that have done that is getting overly detailed.
 * I find it odd how there's a part in 2013 about limited playing time when he played nearly the whole season (148 games) and was not on the DL, which is more glaring when you see that he only played 119 games in 2015.
 * The amount of detail seems to be all over the place. 2013-2016 and 2021 veer into overdetail, whereas 2019 has almost nothing. 2018 is small too but at least that makes sense.
 * "With three hits and four RBIs against the Kansas City Royals on September 25, Cabrera tied Hank Aaron with his 81st career game of 3+ hits and 3+ RBI. Only Lou Gehrig (97), Al Simmons (94), and Babe Ruth (87) had more." Here's yet another example of getting in the weeds with detail, as a split like this really isn't necessary to go into detail on especially if he's not first.

2013 is, unfortunately, where the prose really starts to slip and the article starts to feel disjointed. Upon making the other fixes above, I would send this to WP:GOCE to get a top to bottom copyedit, as the second half of his career in particular doesn't read near GA quality. Honestly, by the time I reached here I had made up my mind to fail the GA, and reading through a few more seasons confirmed it, as the prose gets very rough the later into the career we get. The biggest issue is that it just starts throwing out stats left and right without them feeling necessary. It's understandable to some level in baseball that there will be a lot of stats in articles, but this one definitely misses the forest for the trees. Given the volume of work that needs to be done I'll have to fail the article at this time. Wizardman 18:14, 20 July 2024 (UTC)