FanPost

Should we believe in Cano?


First time poster here. I write a lot on rootzoo when I'm bored at work, but that site lacks great baseball minds. I'm no Yankee expert by any means, but I wanted to take a look at some of the Cano stats because there has been so much talk about him so far this season. It seems like tons of experts are raving about his game, he's receiving that "mvp" talk already, and has made a number of excellent looking defensive plays.

Is he really this good?

The 27 year old Cano makes 9 million dollars this season, is set to make 10 next, and has club options for 14 & 15 million in the 2012 & 2013 seasons. Cano is currently at 1.5 WAR in just 24 games played, which is nearly half of the 3.1 WAR he has averaged per season over the last four. To financially make sense out of his 2010 season, Cano would only need to accumulate just over 1 more WAR @ 3.5mm per WAR. Barring epic injury Cano will be well worth the $.

Cano is a career .309/.342/.488 hitter with a wRC+ of 117. He walks 4.4% of the time while striking out 11.8% of the time. UZR suggests that he is a slightly below average defender. I can't access Dewan's +/- numbers for Cano, but would have to imagine they are pretty close to being on par with UZR. Cano has some flashy plays, but is just about an average to slightly below average defender right now.

Has Cano been lucky this season? Yes, of course, but just how lucky?

Cano's career babip is .322 while his babip this season is at .365. This makes sense considering his LD% is up, and his GB% is down. Could he possibly sustain this? Its possible, but some form of regression is likely.

Cano is batting .387/.433. Is it sustainable? No, of course not, although i could see him hitting .330/.370 this season.

He already has 9 hr this season while compiling a career high of 25 last season. Not only is he hitting more LD than ever, but he is also hitting more FB than ever, at a 37.3% clip. His HR/FB ratio is at 29% this year, more than double his career number of 11.7%. Unless he is eating what Ryan Howard is eating all of a sudden, this as well is unsustainable.

The two things that stand out to me about how his hitting as well is that he is swinging at a higher rate of pitches outside the zone, 34.3% than his career norm 30.9%. His F Swing% or fist pitch strike percentage is also at a career low of 54.8% down nearly 8% from his career norm, which partially explains his career high walk percentage of 7.7%.

Cano proved to us in the past few seasons that he can reach the 4+ WAR plateau when healthy while putting up solid offensive numbers. He's improving and is on pace for near career numbers all across the board. He is lucky in some ways, ie. babip, FB/HR ratio, ect., but it is evident that Cano is the real deal and at 27 should be in for a real real good season. MVP, probably not, the most productive season of his career, it's possible.

Thoughts???

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