Yesterday it was announced that Robinson Cano won his second consecutive Silver Slugger award. The other multiple winners in the A.L. were Joe Mauer (C, 4), Miguel Cabrera (1B, 3), Adrian Beltre (3B, 2), Josh Hamilton (OF, 2), and Vladimir Guerrero (DH, 8).
Since this is a Yankee blog, let’s focus on Cano and just how good he was. I’ve already discussed how badly Cano beat his projections, now let’s compare him to the average second baseman.
In 2010, American League second basemen hit rather poorly. Aside from catchers (.686), second basemen had the lowest OPS (.719) among the nine hitting positions. For the record, right fielders had the highest average OPS, .791.
Let’s compare Cano to the average second baseman. The average AL 2B had a line that looked like this:
.264/.328/.391/.719
Robinson Cano’s line looked like this:
.319/.381/.534/.914.
Cano beat the average second baseman by almost a hundred points in OPS. You wanna go advanced stats? Let’s go with advanced stats.
Among AL 2Bs, with at least 500 plate appearances, Cano just dominated.
He had the highest IsoP by .099 points.
He had the OPS by .193 points.
He had the highest wOBA by .066 points.
He had the most wRC by 41.8 runs created.
He had the most wRAA by 37.2 runs above average.
He had the highest wRC+ by 41.
So, yeah, he was really, really good. Hell, Cano had a great year for any position. The fact that he did it at second base just makes him even more valuable.
There really isn’t that much more to say about that. Robinson Cano is one hell of a hitter. Congratulations to Cano and here’s to many more Silver Sluggers to come.
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