Cano Makes it Hard to Miss A-Rod

The news over the weekend that Alex Rodriguez was going on the DL would worry a number of teams, but for the Yankees it seemed almost like a “Hhhm? What? Oh yeah, ok.” sort of reaction.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the team would much rather have their slugging 3rd Baseman -playing everyday, but in his absence, their 2nd baseman has picked up any slack and continues a spectacular season.

Robinson Cano has put together the type of season the Yankees have envisioned over the last couple of years. Reports of Cano’s lack of focus and maturity issues seemed to dog the young 2nd baseman and a number of people wondered if the trade of Melkey Cabrara was partly to ensure the removal of Cano’s “partner in crime” which would in tourn help him be more consistant and baseball minded.

Perhaps the absence of Cabrara has played a part, perhaps not. In any case, Cano’s numbers have lifted his stature from a solid player in the upper percentage of the league’s Second Basemen, to perhaps the best player at the position in all of Major League Baseball.

His number are sweet: .325 batting average, 25 home runs, 86 rbi, 45 walkss and 58 strike outs in 477 at-bats. Even his errors are down. He’s already tied his 2009 final number in home runs and actually has one more rbi than all of last year. His strike outs are a little above past seasons but not by a lot and his overall production is very elevated to the point that Cano will get some MVP consideration.

The Yankees are known for being a slugging team, with A-Rod and Mark Teixeria being the main names on the big bopper list and Jorge Posada, Curtis Granderson and Nick Swisher being the next ones in line in a lot of fans’ minds. Posada’s age, health and decrease in production and Granderson’s weak season play a factor in a change here, but even if they were putting up numbers like in the past, I think Cano really has to be looked at as one of the most dangerous hitters on the team, perhaps only really behind Teixeria at this point.

It will be interesting to see how Cano handles the role of big bat once the playoff crunch gets here, but so far his season has given the Yankees reason to believe they have a powerhouse in the lineup for years to come.

Will Anyone Ever REALLY Accept A-Rod?

So yesterday Alex Rodriguez hit his 600th career home run to a bit less fanfare than you might have expected.

The crowd cheered loudly and all, but you could almost tell there was a restraint to it all.

There’s a possible number of reasons for this… the lessening of importance that 600 has on history… the history of A-Rod’s grating personality… or the obvious elephant in the room.

Yeah we’re talking about the steroids admission.

I’m not about to get to rehashing that here… but the fcat remains that A-Rod is going to be more heaped with the names such as Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa than he will with Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays.

It’s not just the steriods thing though (and much as it is a huge part of it). A-Rod has managed to place himself in a weird position where so few people seem to embrace him in the way they do players such as Derek Jeter or Mark Teixeria. For whatever reason people feel the need to demonize him, even with the great clutch postseason he had last year.

I’m not a big fan of Rodriguez, but I do think he is unfairly maligned by the average Yankee fan. However, his steriods admission should play a huge part in how we view his acomplishments. For whatever reason it is, a great player is not loved in the way he expects to be loved and going forward we have to wonder if he’ll ever really be embraced at all.

The pursuit of homerun 763 will be the main focus of the last third of A-Rod’s career and you know the Yankee hype machine will want to overwhelm the baseball fan’s senses with the march towards the largest of sports records… but the question remains if in the end it’ll be the specticle A-Rod and the Yankees imagined when they signed that new contract through 2017.

Just take a look at the backpage to today’s New York Daily News which has A-Rod in his homerun trot with the words “CONGRATS*” Notice that asterik? Well underneath the congrats are the words “To your tainted milestone”

Barring serious injury, you would expect he’ll get there. If he averages about 22 home runs a year between now and 2017 (depending on how many he hits the rest of this season). How important it really is to anyone but A-Rod and the Yankee brass at that point though is questionable.

All-Star Puzzlement

The 2010 All-Star game will be remembered for a number of things… it came on the day that one of the largest figures in modern MLB history passed away in George Steinbrenner, it marked the end to a thirteen year drought for the National League, and it also might be remembered for the strange moves the managers made in a very close game that could have gone either way.

Both teams pitched very well, which shouldn’t be a huge surprise seeing the names on the rosters for the most part and noting that things like home runs and scoring are down this year overall. This is certainly looking like the year of the pitcher and the all-star game was no exception.

Both managers made some very weird choices (I’m not talking roster choices… I’ve bitched about that enough) though that made me puzzle why.

On the NL side, Charlie Manuel didn’t exactly surprise me when he named Ryan Howard to be the starting DH. I wouldn’t have made that same choice… it should have gone to Joey Votto, who is tearing up the NL like it’s his own personal batting cage… but since Howard is his guy, it’s not too much of a stretch to figure he’d put Howard in that role.

What really made no sense to me though, was that by the 5th inning, you had (arguely) the three best hitters already out of the game in Albert Pujlos, David Wright (who had two hits and a stolen base in the game) and Ryan Braun… but Howard was still in there until the 7th inning. Nepotism is one thing… but waiting until the 7th inning (and at that point the NL had been shut out) to finally get the hottest hitter in the NL into the game didn’t made a lot of sense. Either did putting Hong-Chih Kuo in the game to pitch the 5th with names like Adam Wainwright, Brian Wilson, Heath Bell and even his own Roy Halladay still in the bullpen.

On the AL side, every player got into the game except for A-Rod… and after Big Papi singled to lead off the 9th inning… wouldn’t it have made sense to pinch run for him? Of course he could have pinch hit for Beltre, but he had only come up in the 8th and had only played defense… however Ty Wigginton was pinch hit for with Nick Swisher after playing on one inning of defense and he didn’t get an at-bat (which I though was pretty unfair of Girardi to do to him) so it wouldn’t have been the first time he would have done that. Once he let Betre hit (and he struck out) you had John Buck up afterwards and you had to leave him in because he was the last catcher… I get that… but you had Ian Kinsler up after him and Vernon Wells up after that. Odds are you weren’t pinch hitting for either. What was Joe Girardi waiting for? The next obvious move would be A-Rod pinch hitting for Elvis Andrus (and A-Rod could have played short had the game gone on) but you had three batters before Andrus would be getting up. Of course, Buck hits a bloop single that Ortiz had to wait to see if it would be caught or not and OF Marlon Byrd made a spectacular play, by picking up the hit on one bounce, spinning and firing a bullet to 2nd, where he caught the slow Big Papi by a step. If it had been A-Rod, he would have been safe and it would have been 1st and 2nd with one out and the winning run at the plate.

All in all, it was a tight and exciting game with a lot of dominating pitching and good defense. However, to me, the game was a little marred by the weird decisions each manager made.