DETROIT — Miguel Cabrera revealed Saturday he’s been dealing with an abdominal strain, suffered in Chicago, which kept him out of the lineup for four games.

“It’s not the hip. It’s in my abdominal. Separate injury,” said the slugging third baseman who’d missed the Home Run Derby with a sore back, and then had been diagnosed with a strained hip flexor since Monday’s opener in the Chicago series, the same time he said he tweaked his abdominal muscle.

“The first day in Chicago. It was when I was running.”

Cabrera was back in the lineup for Saturday evening’s contest against the Phillies. The task in the interim was to get him to a point where he was playable, Tigers trainer Kevin Rand had said Friday, even if that wasn’t fully 100 percent.

“Right now, I’m like 70 percent. Maybe 80 percent. I’m nervous. First day — I’m nervous,” the slugger said. “I’ll play with a little pain, but I can play with that.”

The Tigers are 6-1 without Cabrera over the last three seasons, and 13-11 in games he’s missed since joining the team before the 2008 season.

Each of the last two seasons, he missed just one game each, managing to play through the aches and pains of a 162-game season.

“It’s hard (to get rid of them),” he said. “You try to, but it’s hard.”

Rand said Friday Cabrera had been improving.

“Much better. He’s made real good improvement. Obviously, we held him out of the lineup today, to give him a chance to do some activity. He’s feeling a lot better, but he still feels like he needs another day or so,” Rand said. “You’d rather lose Miguel Cabrera for two, three games than two or three weeks. It’s important for us to make sure he’s right before we put him back out there.”