Robinson Cano, 2009
What’s reasonable to expect from Robinson Cano next season? You bet the Yankees have their fingers crossed that 2008 was an aberration, and that Cano will bounce back … ideally, performing more like the player he was in ’06 and ’07, when he looked like one of the rising stars in the game and his hits total since the beginning of his career was surpassed only by Chase Utley among second basemen.
It seems Cano is doing his part. The New York Post reports that Cano has hired a personal trainer from New Jersey and has dropped body fat this offseason, while The New York Times notes that Brian Cashman remains committed to Cano as the Yankees’ second baseman — those Orlando Hudson thoughts, it seems, should be packed away.
I’m reminded of a conversation I had with Cano for a story late in the season, when the Yankees were in Anaheim. Cano really didn’t want to talk much about his low batting average at the time, so he wasn’t his usual, upbeat self.
But at that time, he was getting slammed in the newspapers and on talk radio, to the point where he just wanted to turn the clock ahead to next year already.
“I don’t want to say this is a bad year, but it’s at least a year that
I’m going to learn from and not be back in this situation again,” Cano
said. “This is a year that you can just say, ‘OK, this is not happening
again.’”
Bryan Hoch
Here’s a reasonable expectation for Cano, don’t swing @ the first pitch! Here’s another one, earn your money. Here’s a third, outform that d-bag from Boston!
I’m out.
I’m glad Cashman isnt giving up on Cano. All great players have at least one bad year, no sense in giving up on him already. Getting Orlando Hudson would have been more of a desperation move
Why hasn’t Pettitte been signed already? The Yankees aren’t going to land 3 free agent starters so surely there’s a need and his one year contract demand is suitable for both parties. If he ends up in Houston, LA, wherever and the Yanks rotation isn’t full of studs the management is a bunch of fools
Why haven’t the Yamkees gotten rid of Cano is beyond me. He is not worth the money that they pay him. Dustin Pedroia is worthy of Yankee money and he reminds me of one of the Greats, Derek Jeter who comes to play 100%. Cano is not of that caliber and should not be allowed to wear pinstripes. Andy Pettite is going to play in LA next year for a real coach, Joe Torre not a scab, Girardi. Someone please ask George what the heck he was thinking on that one. Willie is a better coach. I was born a Yankees fan a long time ago and I can’t stand what has been going on. It is time for change keep Jeter, A-Rod, Posada, Swish, Damon, Wang and Chamberlain and get rid of the rest.
Pettitte is gone. The Dodgers have a 3 year/45M conversation, no formal offer. The Yankees would need to at the very least give Pettitte a player option to stay. I mentioned the Dodgers before and now they are favorites.
Sabathia is talking to Angels, something he is not doing with us.
Boras wants 3 years Veritek (he’ll get 1), wants 6 for Manny (he’ll get 3), wants 10 for Texiera ( might get 7), Wants 3 for Lowe (I wouldn’t give him one, emergency starter midseason type).
I wish somebody would sign already. It’s about to be December, and NO ONE has signed yet. CC is an a_s_s not making it clear to the Yankees what his intentions are; Lowe and Burnett are old and injury-prone, respectively; A couple of weeks ago, I thought signing Teixeira was a backburner type of thing, but now I believe it has come ot the forefront. If it’s not that we’ve run into a completely biased pitcher, we’ve also run into old injury prone ones. HORRIBLE.
I think our only chance at making this a good offseason is by addin a guy like O Perez, who has his inconsistencies but isn’t injury prone and old; sign a guy like Teixeira who would be cake on top of ice cream with A-Rod below him. Sign a good reliever or two, because we’ll need a great bullpen– not good, but great ( with arms like Hughes, Kennedy who come with their uncertainty ) Explore some type of trade for Jake Peavy. You know!? I mean, I thought the organization was going to leave no rocks unturned, but it seems that they’ve been on a Sabathia lifeline just waiting there like a desperate housewife. These guys need to move their a_s_s_e_s.
Pettite is unlikely to sign with the Dodgers, http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/yankees/ny-spyanks265942387nov26,0,1586824.story and Cano is worth the money he’s young and has huge upside. Who are you going to have play 2B other than Cano right now, there’s no FA or anybody rumored to be traded that I’d take over Cano. It’s funny how one bad season and he goes from being the next Rod Carew to some scrub that people want to trade. CC is doing what he’s supposed to do, not many people jump at the first offer and not the Angels may come close to matching our offer, if he prefers Cali, and wouldn’t be taking a huge pay cut why wouldn’t he wait to entertain a Cali offer? It was known before we even made the offer that it wasn’t going to be jumped on immediately and that it might not be enough because money isn’t everything. The off season is still young Thanksgiving is tomorrow, the winter meetings haven’t happened yet people need to calm down. Getting a scrub like O. Perez wont help anything the Yankees want to accomplish, he had an ERA approaching 5 in the NL, I’d rather the risk on Sheets or Burnett than Perez because when they first two are healthy they’re dam close to ace caliber, Perez is no more than a #5 even when we have Hughes in the rotation.
Wholohan I saw this and I am skeptical. If Pettitte has an offer on the table, the Yankees will have a hard time retaining Pettitte.
He still prefers NYC and the New Yankee Stadium so I think it’s a similar situation to CC, if we make a similar offer to him he’ll choose us over them basically. But thats just my take.
I agree but if an offer is 3 years, we will need to offer atleast an option and the money is the 15M range which we didn’t want to do.
My take is we need to get Pettitte done now and not wait for the free agents.
Bryan, do you think we will ever have a blog about Pavano again?
Whats the over/under zero on that?
Yankees not worried by Angels’ company-Bryan Hoch
http://hotstove.mlblogs.com/archives/2008/11/yankees_not_worried_by_angels.html
Matt,
Peavy added the Yankees and Angels to the five original teams he would accept a trade to. If he was dead set against New York he would not have done so.
I think you can see that everyone is desparate to get out of Diego. Especially after the way they treated Hoffman. Peavy may not want to go to NY but he wants to leave Diego.
Mattress is wrong, the Yankees take car eof the own despite a paycut.
Want or will is just semantics. And maybe Pettitte is just going to find out his open market value before the Yankees make an offer. I doubt its $16M a year. In any case we will have five starters better than what we went into 2008 with.
Mattress knows little about the way we played hardball with Posman and Mo but in the end they got their money. Pettitte will take a paycut but if the Dodgers offer 3 years/45M, we won’t be able to get him at much lower and we will need to give a 2 year deal.
Actually, Mattress is flat out wrong, we won’t sign Pettitte early because we want him to take a discount but that approach could mean he walks AGAIN.
Cano shouldn’t be mentioned in the same sentence as Rod Carew unless it’s comparing him to Carew’s jock. Cano is going to be the next Steve Sax. I hope I’m wrong.
If Peavy indeed feels that way, it’s interesting to note that Towers forced him to include the Yankees. How many players get traded to a team in a city they don’t WANT to play for or in? The players have more control now, but it still happens every day. George Weiss would laugh himself to death if he weren’t already!!! Again, Matt, we will wait and see.
And all of you other bloggers please feel free to join this discussion. Anything posted here is NOT a two-way conversation, so your Mamma’s rule of “speak only when you’re spoken to” does not apply.
We might hear more about Peavy after Cashman and Towers meet in Vegas 12/8 to 12/12. Remember how long the Santana thing dragged out?
It could still happen, but this year we don’t have A-Rod and Santana to talk about and Hank has kept quiet. It’s still November!!! Besides, unless one of us has spoken directly to Peavy, this is all speculation. Granted there are more “opinions” expressed in the west coast media so Matt may be closer to the truth.
Why is everybody jumping ship ad Matt put it on Cano? He’s a career .325 hitter (Pedroia is a career .313 with .326 last season .001 better than Cano’s career BA) he averages 1 HR shy of 21 per season (Pedroia hit 17 last and has 27 in his 2 years with the Sox) has a .468 slugging% (Pedroia had a .459 comparable). The one stat that Robbie has t work on is walks, he walked only 99 times in 3 years, (33 per season) while Pedroia has 104 in 2 seasons. People were comparing 2B the stats don’t like. Cano has hired a personal trainer and has said he’s committed to turning a sub par season around in 2009. If we bailed on every player that had one bad season in his first few we’d never have any prospects.
And on Andy why would we sign a decent pitcher to a $16MM contract when he’s not even close to worth that. If he wants to try the open market asking for $16MM per he can, he’ll be a FA until he comes back to NY and accepts a pay cut, and I highly doubt LA will offer 3 years though if they did that would probably pull him away from NYC but think of how he fell apart in the second half of this season when only Santana has better 2nd half career stats than Andy. He owns post All Star Break baseball and he collapsed this season, it may be an unfortunate sign that one of my personal favorite players in MLB just doesn’t have it anymore for the full 162(+) anymore and isn’t worth a multi-year deal or $16MM.
http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20081125&content_id=3692566&vkey=news_nyy&fext=.jsp&c_id=nyy
I liked Paul O’Neill’s last home game and the oviation he got. Never seen anything close.
I also laughed at in Seattle (not Yankees Stadium) when Seattle fans started screaming Tino at Giambi
Hey, Bryan, [Bombers Beat] …
Best Wishes for a very “Happy Thanksgiving” !!! … Thanks for a great season here at “Bombers Beat” … It’s been a pleasure viewing your many excellent “posts”; “comments”; and, “articles” !!! … We all look forward to a great 2009 season for the New York Yankees, ending with the Yankees winning the World Series, the Yanks 27th World Championship !!! … Go Yankees !!! … Jimmy [27NYY]
http://baseballtheyankeesandlife.mlblogs.com/
To Everybody At “Bombers Beat” — “Happy Thanksgiving” !!!
All your comments, thoughts, and opinions made the 2008 baseball season a lot more fun to follow !!! … The 2009 Baseball Season will be a great year for the New York Yankees, ending with all Yankee fans celebrating a World Series victory — the Yanks 27th World Championship !!! … Enjoy the “Hot Stove League” … Go Yankees !!! … Jimmy [27NYY] … http://baseballtheyankeesandlife.mlblogs.com/
http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2008/11/the_2008_rule_5.php
Just a little bit on the rule 5 draft. I guess it bodes well that in the first time in recent memory we have enough decent prospects (pitching-wize anyway) to be unable to protect them all…the article does lose all credibility when it lists Igawa though
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!