Agree on all of your points except (a). Leyland is a chronic underachiever (well, the Tigers are; hard to say how much is Leyland's fault directly). He has been the manager in Detroit for 8 years. They have 4 post-season appearances, with three division crowns. Doesn't sound bad until you 1) think about how they're in arguably the crappiest division in MLB, and 2) their payroll crushes the rest of the AL Central. Again, not all Leyland's doing, but if we look at a manager's overall impact as the ability to get the most out of his players, then I think he fails that test (but sure, to be fair, he's not the one handing out $25M/yr to dough boy Fielder).

Point (g) is by far the most interesting to me. Cabrera is the best hitter I've personally ever seen. I didn't think that I would ever be more intrigued by a hitter than Pujols in his prime (and, arguably, Pujols's career numbers are better through each one's age 30 season), but Cabrera has such a grasp of contact and power hitting. It's remarkable. The dude, when healthy, hits 400 footers to all fields with regularity, but also knows how to poke a single when the right situation exists. He let's the pitcher basically tell him where to hit the ball (his spray chart is crazy; basically a third of his hits go to each field). I never got to watch Pujols as much as Cabrera for obvious reasons, but the one thing that really sticks out to me about both is that their at bats aren't at bats; they're events, things that I'll stop what I'm doing to sit and enjoy. There haven't been any other hitters I've felt that way about (dead pull hitters with tons of power can be fun, but they're just not that interesting).