Miguel Cabrera's Cut Face a Mystery

Saturday night, the Tigers arrived at their ballpark for an incredibly important game against the White Sox, as they hoped to hold off the surging Twins for the AL Central title.

We now know the Tigers and Twins will meet Tuesday in Minnesota for a one-game playoff to determine the champ. What we don't know is how Tigers star Miguel Cabrera ended up with several cuts and scratches to his face.

If you take Cabrera's word for it, his dog worked him over. Many around Detroit don't seem to be willing to do so. There are rumors circulating among fans that Cabrera was scratched up by his girlfriend after they'd been drinking all night.

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Mike Stone of MLive.com has a pretty good compilation of everything surrounding this mysterious scratches. The basic gist is that everything's been pretty cloak-and-dagger from the Tigers and local authorities. Cabrera reportedly didn't answer when first asked about the cuts, and then responded it was a dog, emphasizing the large size of his dog.

Sunday, Cabrera was again asked about his face and had a simple response.

"I'm focused on one thing -- the game," Cabrera said.

It's hard to imagine why Cabrera would want everyone being so secretive if he really just got lit up by his pooch. One would think he'd just continue to stress it was his dog, maybe even making a few jokes about it. Still, that isn't to say he's lying. Nothing has surfaced in the past two days to prove anything otherwise to this point.

Prior to Detroit's 5-3 victory on Sunday, Cabrera told a handful of reporters that he would speak following the game, but he was unavailable to media according to MLive.com.

In an e-mail to the Associated Press, Tigers general manager Dave Dombrowski wrote: "It is a personal situation and I am not at liberty to discuss it further."

Detroit skipper Jim Leyland took a similar stance, refusing to acknowledge the situation was unfortunate. "Do you want to talk about today's game?" Leyland snapped back. "I manage the team on the field. That's my job -- to get this team ready to play today.

"If you want to talk about the game, we'll talk about the game. If you don't want to, you can excuse yourself."

Cabrera is the Tigers' best offensive weapon. He's hitting .325 with 33 home runs and 101 RBI and a whopping .940 OPS.