Miguel Cabrera = Hank Aaron?

Sports Illustrated has a nice pictorial up of the top 20 young hitters in baseball. The Marlins' Miguel Cabrera comes in at number 3 (and I think you could make a case for him to be as high as number 2).

What I found most interesting was the note about Baseball Reference's most comparable players to Cabrera at this age (a list that I always love to look at). The list compares a player to all other current and past major leaguers - based on their statistics and age. Here are Miguel's comparables through age 21 (coming into the year):

1. Hank Aaron *
   
2. Ruben Sierra (a)
   
3. Sam Crawford *
   
4. Dick Kokos
   
5. Mickey Mantle *
   
6. Joe Medwick *
   
7. Whitey Lockman
   
8. Mike Tiernan
   
9. Andruw Jones (a)
   
10. Greg Luzinski

The *s of course indicate that the player went on to become a hall of famer (and Ruben Sierra and Andruw Jones are the only currently active players on the list).

Having four Hall of Famers on your list of ten most comparable players is pretty impressive (including two - Mantle and Aaron - who would be in a Hall of Fame of Hall of Famers). Just one more thing that confirms that Cabrera really could be something special.