With the Pittsburgh Pirates in a free fall — that’s the whistling sound you’ve been hearing — for the second consecutive season, most area baseball fans have been drained from the love of baseball.

In fact, attention has shifted around here to the Steelers and their batch of problems. There are, however, many good storylines in Major League Baseball.

You could point at the playoff push by the overachieving Oakland A’s or the first playoff appearance by a Washington team in 79 years, but I’m looking at Detroit Tigers third baseman Miguel Cabrera, chasing one of baseball most elusive achievements — the Triple Crown.

The last player to lead his respective league in home runs, RBIs and batting average was the Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox in 1967.

Yaz hit .326 that year, tied the Minnesota Twins’ Harmon Killebrew in home runs with 44 and had 121 RBIs.

There have been many players who have won the home run and RBI titles, but for a power hitter to also lead in batting average, that’s pretty special.

After Monday night’s game, Cabrera is leading all three categories with 42 home runs — which is tied with the Texas Rangers’ Josh Hamilton — 133 RBIs and a .331 average.

He’s also first in on-base percentage with a ridiculous .395 and second in runs with 106.

And the beauty of the numbers is Cabrera, unlike the Pirates, has been getting stronger.

In August, Cabrera batted .357 with eight home runs and 24 RBIs, then followed up with a .346 average in September with nine home runs and 24 RBIs.

Cabrera, it should be noted, still has five more games this month before a series early next week to close out the regular season.

The kicker is Cabrera moved back to third base after spending the past few seasons exclusively at first base. He had to relearn the position, which could have had an adverse effect on his hitting. Obviously, it did not and he has played remarkably solid.

Can Cabrera sustain his marks? It should be interesting to see.

I had been following Cabrera all season as I tried to land him on my fantasy baseball team, back in July.

I put together what I thought was a very good package of players, but his team owner wanted to hold on to him for a little while. He wanted to try and make a push for a playoff spot.

Fortunately, I secured one of the four playoff spots. Unfortunately, I couldn’t secure a trip to the finals as my hitting went south. Cabrera in the lineup would have been a big boost.

The Tigers are certainly fortunate to have Cabrera, trying to make a playoff push of its own.

Whether they do or not, Cabrera will have done his part. And made history doing it.

Sam Tallarico is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.