Detroit Tigers legend Miguel Cabrera to play one final season in native Venezuela

Detroit Tigers legend Miguel Cabrera, who retired from MLB at the end of the 2023 season, isn’t quite done playing baseball.

Cabrera, 40, this week said he plans to play for another “Tigers” team – the Tigres de Aragua of the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League during the 2024-25 season. The Maracay, Venezuela native, will not play during the ongoing 2023-24 season, saying he instead plans to use the time off to rest and prepare for one final season of baseball beginning in October 2024.

“I would like to play one more year, competing, playing well and winning with these young players,” Cabrera told Venezuelan reporters this week during a press conference for the Pepsi Home Run Festival at Monumental Stadium in Caracas, Venezuela, according to the Detroit Free Press. “I’m going to prepare properly, plan my final season next year and make it big like it was in the U.S.”

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LVBP features eight teams that play a 55-game schedule each season, which runs from October through January. Cabrera previously played in LVBP from 2000 to 2008 during his winter off-seasons from MLB, during which time he played for both the then-Florida Marlins and Detroit Tigers.

Cabrera stopped playing in LVBP after signing a $153.3 million, eight-year contract extension with the Tigers in March 2008, which at the time was the fourth-richest contract in MLB history. That marked the first of two contract extensions Cabrera signed with the Tigers, along with a $248 million, eight-year extension signed in March 2014, which ended at the conclusion of this past MLB season.

Cabrera, a former Triple Crown winner, two-time MVP and 12-time All-Star, retires from MLB as one of the most accomplished hitters in league history. He is one of 28 players in MLB history to surpass 500 career home runs with 511, and also ranks 13th in MLB history in career RBI (1,881) and 17th in hits (3,174).

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Following his retirement in October, the Tigers announced Cabrera would be staying with the organization in a front office role as a special assistant to the president of baseball operations.