After coming back from the WBC with what appeared to be minor injuries, Robbie Cano and Damaso Marte will get MRI’s tomorrow after being checked out by team doctors. Cano’s injury is being described as right shoulder tendonitis, while Marte is dealing with left shoulder inflamation. Cano pinch hit in today’s game game against the Astros and played catch after the game, so hopefully that’s a sign that it’s not too serious. Marte hasn’t tested the shoulder as far as we know, and says he hurt himself working with 25 pound weights.
Cano & Marte hurting
Fresh off a dramatic and historic loss to the Netherlands in the WBC, Robbie Cano and Damaso Marte returned to the Yanks today nursing some minor injuries, says Pete Caldera. Marte has pain in his left pectoral, believed to be the result of weighlifting, while Cano’s right shoulder is barking. It’s possible Cano’s injury is a result of the workload and intensity of the WBC games. Both players are going to get checked out by the Yanks’ medical staff today, and won’t see action this weekend as previously thought. The injuries sound minor, so hopefully they won’t be out very long.
Hoping for a major rebound from Cano
Robinson Cano and his sub-par 2008 season have been major issues of discussion this off-season. While many Yankees fans figured he’d improve upon his 2007 season, he got off to a horrid start before bringing himself back to an acceptable level of offensive production (.298/.324/.452 from June 1 on, .302/.331/.464 from July 1 on). Mike linked to a Beyond the Boxscore analysis of Cano, which used Cano’s contact rate, BABIP, and Isolated Power to show that we can expect a rebound, but not to get pie-in-the-sky and think that he can reproduce 2006. That sounds reasonable, and I think Yanks fans everywhere would take Cano’s 2007 — even considering his slow start — in a heartbeat.
Yesterday, Moshe Mandel of The Yankee Universe took an in-depth look at Cano from both a statistical and scouting point of view. On the scouting end he discusses Cano’s stance, which became a big issue later in the year. After experiencing success with an open stance for his entire career, hitting coach Kevin Long though tit better to close it up. You can see the difference in this post on Cano’s 2008 season:
So what was the difference in 2008 which caused concern for Cano’s stance? Mandel tackles the issue:
Another obvious problem with Robbie’s swing was the motion of his head combined with his front shoulder flying open. Players are supposed to keep the head looking at the pitcher, and then the ball, at all times, while the front shoulder remains square to the pitcher. Robbie consistently pulled his head early while allowing his front shoulder to fly open, which contributed greatly to his unbalanced swing and resulted in plenty of softly pulled balls on pitches that Robbie would typically drive.
Why weren’t these issues a problem in the past few years? That’s tough to say. It would take some serious video analysis to see exactly how his body moved through the swinging motion, and how that changed from 2006 through 2008. Makes me wish there were an easy way to find such compilations. Maybe MLBAM could one day offer this as a premium service for nerds. I’d rather pay for that than my ESPN Insider account.
On the statistical end, Mandel takes things a bit further than the typical BABIP argument that Cano was unlucky. He cites a Rich Lederer article which notes the values of line drives, ground balls, and fly balls.
When it comes to batting average, line drives are king, followed by groundballs, outfield flyballs, and infield flies. … However, when it comes to production, flyballs are more valuable than groundballs. To wit, including home runs, line drives produced .40 runs in 2007 and .39 in 2008, while the average outfield flyball yielded .18 runs in 2007 and 2008. Meanwhile, the average groundball generated .05 runs per event in 2007 and .04 in 2008.
Cano saw a decrease in ground balls and an increase in fly balls last season, so this could have drive his batting average down. Mandel: “Essentially, Cano hit fewer grounders and more flyballs without gaining the run production that increased flyballs would give a hitter whose swing is not faulty. One other point to notice is that Cano’s O-Contact% and FB% saw a significant increase, affirming the point that pitchers were throwing Robbie fastballs out of the zone, and he was more than willing to just put them in play rather than fouling them off or laying off of them.”
I’ve loved Cano ever since he came up in 2005, and I’ve had high hopes for him ever since. He delivered in 2006 and 2007, which makes me think that his 2008 problems are surmountable. He’s worked heavily with Kevin Long, and by all accounts has done all he can this winter in order to fix the flaws in his swing. Given his talent, this should all add up to a solid campaign for Cano in 2009 and beyond.
Robinson Cano gives back
Kat O’Brien just got back from a trip down to the Dominican, and aside from all the talk about steroids and the various development academies comes this gem (emphasis mine):
Probably the best part of the trip was getting to talk to a lot of children and teens who hope to one day be major leaguers. We happened upon a bunch of kids practicing in San Pedro de Macoris, Robinson Cano’s hometown. They were all wearing jerseys with Cano on the back, and a coach told me Cano had bought uniforms for the entire league – about 6,000 kids. He also bought two ambulances for the town. So he is really beloved there, the coach said even more so than fellow natives Sammy Sosa and Alfonso Soriano. What people like best is that Cano still comes back in winter, often sitting and watching kids play baseball on Saturdays.
Awesome, you gotta love it when these megarish athletes give something back, whether it be providing an entire league with jerseys or taking a family on a Disney vacation. It’s amazing how little play stories like this get in the MSM. (h/t Jason)
Will Cano rebound?
One of the biggest goats of the 2008 season was second baseman Robbie Cano, who saw his offensive output drop from .306-.353-.488 with a .358 wOBP in 2007 to just .271-.305-.410 and a measly .307 wOBP last year. Many a pundit pointed to his newfound financial security as the culprit, others pointed to Larry Bowa’s departure. Whatever it was, the Yankees need Cano to rebound not just for 2009’s sake, but for the sake of the team’s future because he’s their only established position player closer to his 25th birthday than his 30th.
Dan Turkenkopf of Beyond the Box Score took a look at what could have been the reasons for Cano’s down year, and whether or not there’s rebound potential. Turkenkopf looked at three statistical components of Cano’s year, so let’s summarize:
- Contact Rate: This was unchanged compared to past year’s, but it’s not the best way to measure offensive performance.
- BABIP: Cano’s BABIP dropped 45 points from 2007, down to .286, indicating that he might have run into some bad luck. Simple regression to the mean (.323 career BABIP) indicates bounceback potential.
- Isolated Power: Of the hits Cano was able to pick up last year, not many dropped in for extra bases. His IsoP bombed 43 points to just .139, well below the ~.180 level he was at in 2006 and 2007. Expecting a return to his career mark isn’t as simple as it is with BABIP.
The article notes that we should expect Cano to perform better at the plate in 2009 than he did in 2008, but matching his 2006-2007 levels might be too much to expect. The drop in IsoP is troubling, so that’s something we’ll have to watch.
One thing that should be mentioned is the late season change to Cano’s batting stance, something Joe touched on back in October. While we can’t draw anything conclusive from such a small sample, Cano hit the snot out of the ball after the change, which if nothing else is cause for some optimism. Also, it’s worth noting that 2008 Robbie Cano hit almost like 2007 Robbie Cano for a pretty big chunk of the season, going .301-.329-.451 from May 8th on.
Aside from the offense though, Robbie’s defensive value was way down last year. Using the +/- system, Cano went from a +22 defender in 2007 to a -13 defender in 2008, a 35 run play (!!!) swing. Fangraphs has his 2007 defense valued at +10.8 runs, and his 2008 defense at -7.2 runs, a much more modest 18 run dropoff. We can’t say for sure if this was Cano taking his struggles at the plate into the field, or if he lost a step in his range, or if he’s just another Lazy Latin American Player™, but it’s something he needs to improve. There’s no excuses really, he’s only 26 and basically in his athletic prime. All it takes is hard work.
As the stats indicate, the offensive demise of Robinson Cano has been greatly exaggerated. The Yanks are on the hook for a minimum of $27M over the next three years, so they need him to get back to being that 4-5 win player he was and can be.
Photo Credit: DC Products
Ortiz, Cano defend Presinal
Yesterday’s not-so-new revelations that A-Rod had trained with the Angel Presinal generated a good amount of discussion on RAB. While Presinal has been linked to PED use via the Mitchell Report and various journalistic investigations, numerous Dominican players have turned to him as a trainer.
Today, The Times notes that MLB is again turning a wary eye toward Presinal in light of the revelations that he trained with A-Rod during the period of the Yankee slugger’s admitted PED use. While Presinal has engaged in “he said/he said” battle with Major League Baseball officials over Juan Gonzalez’s 2001 steroid use, MLB has formally banned Presinal from the game in the U.S.
Back home in the DR, however, it is a different story. Presinal trained the Dominican Republic WBC team in 2006, and yesterday both David Ortiz and Robinson Cano defended their trainer.
This is, of course, a dicey situation. Cano said he wasn’t concerned about being, as Kat O’Brien put it, “guilty by association,” but with the way the steroid witch hunts are conducted, the company one keeps weights heavily upon the court of media — if not public — opinion. Hopefully, Presinal’s steroid transgressions are things of the past because the players who swear by him are not inclined to stop.
How will Girardi handle the 2009 lineup?
One of our bigger complaints about Joe Girardi in 2009 was that he tinkered with the lineup a bit too much. Some of this was due to injury, but other times it was based on match-ups. While playing to the strengths of your roster is generally favorable, some of Girardi’s moves weren’t defensible with split data. Instead, it seemed he subscribed to the “sit lefties against lefties” mode of managerial thought. Unfortunately, that’s not always the best way to go.
We knew going into last season that Jason Giambi wouldn’t play 162 games. He’d have been lucky to play 150 games, especially since he was the primary first baseman. He ended up with 142, and only a few of his off-days were due to small injuries. For the most part, he sat against lefties, which caused some frustration at RAB. Jason does hit from the left side of the plate, but he holds his own well enough against lefties, posting identical splits in batting average and OBP in 2009. His slugging was a bit higher against righties, but that’s no reason to sit him against southpaws.
This issue was exacerbated by Giambi’s normal spot in the lineup, No. 5. The normal replacements at first, Wilson Betemit and Richie Sexson, weren’t going to slot in there. When Giambi sat, the guys at the bottom of the order had to move up. The problem was that the Yanks rarely had a player who could hit adequately behind A-Rod. This meant the order juggled when Giambi sat. I can’t imagine that being good for anyone.
Lesson: Don’t get into a platoon situation with a player at the heart of your order. It doesn’t appear as though this will be an issue this year, though one of the bounceback candidates will have to step up and take that slot. The top four are basically set in stone: Damon, Jeter, then Teixeira and A-Rod. A healthy Matsui could take the spot, as could Jorge Posada if his shoulder holds up. Even Robinson Cano could be a candidate.
Two guys who likely won’t get a chance to hit fifth: Xavier Nady and Nick Swisher. That’s a good thing, because those are two guys you could see platooned to some degree or another. Let’s check out their recent and career splits.
Last year, Swisher was equally crappy against lefties and righties, as you might expect. He had a much better eye against lefties, putting a .197 batting average against a .359 OBP (.162 ISO — .094 ISO against righties). His slugging against righties was a bit higher, but the ISO mark — slugging minus batting average to cancel out the singles — was along the same lines, .189 against lefties, .192 against righties). Career he’s a .240/.338/.459 hitter against righties, .253/.396/.429 against lefties. So it looks like if you’re going to platoon Swisher, you want him hitting against lefties.
(His 2007 stats were skewed heavily towards lefties, for what it’s worth.)
Problem there is that Xavier Nady has long been known as a lefty masher. In 2005 he posted a .700 OPS against righties vs. a .852 mark against lefties. In 2006 the split was even more pronounced, with a .969 OPS against lefties vs. a .736 OPS against righties. However, that started to change in 2007. In 366 plate appearances against righties Nady posted a .802 OPS, while posting a .819 mark against lefties. His .805 OPS against righties in 2008 might signal that he’s developed over the years and could be fine as an everyday player.
What does this mean for the Yankees lineup in 2009? It might mean Hideki Matsui gets in on the platoon situation. He has a career .870 OPS against righties vs. a .803 OPS against lefties. This includes splits of .815 vs. .751 in 2008 and .885 vs. .821 in 2007. Hideki could then take his off-days against lefties, allowing both Swisher and Nady to be in the lineup. Against righties, either Swisher or Nady could sit.
Of course, given the lesson posted above, this would disqualify Hideki from the fifth slot. Well, at least in my mind. Maybe I’m overthinking this, but I’d far rather see a consistent lineup one through five, day in and day out. Since Jorge won’t be in the lineup every day, that leaves Cano to round out the heart of the order. Slotting him fifth would allow the Yanks to trot out Damon-Jeter-Teixeira-Arod-Cano for almost every game. I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel more comfortable when the lineup fluctuations come at the bottom, not in the heart.
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