Look, a plane. Maybe I'll buy one of those in a couple years.
Early this season, when Robinson Cano had gotten off to a slow start, I was openly wondering if he had entered his decline phase. Granted, it would be a bit premature for a player to begin to decline at age 29, but it isn’t unheard of. At the time it looked like Robbie was putting together a 2012 season that was shaping up to be a bit worse than his 2011 campaign, which itself was not as good as his career best 2010 season. Three seasons could be seen as a trend.
A scorching hot month of June later (Robbie’s wOBA in June is .466, although at .408 it was solid in May as well), and my hypothesis doesn’t just look wrong, it looks flat out absurd. No one knows how long Robbie can maintain this pace, but if the season were to end today Cano would hit .310/.371/.591. Entering Sunday’s game Cano had a wOBA of .398. With an fWAR of 3.9, Fangraphs rates Robbie as the seventh best player in the game. Baseball Reference agrees. Robbie’s bWAR is 3.7, which ties him for sixth best in the game. No matter how you slice it, Robbie is on fire and looks to be having yet another lights out season at a key defensive position.
The multi-million dollar question is therefore what do you offer Robinson? Cano isn’t going to be a free-agent yet. The Yankees have a team option for 2013, an option that is guaranteed to be struck. But he’s a free agent after that. Scott Boras negotiates his contracts. He’s one of the most famous players in the game today and, although I’ve suggested he’s overrated in the past, that isn’t the case anymore. Since 2009 only six players in the game have been better. Most of the players ahead of Cano have gotten nine figure pay days. In 2014 Robbie will be just 31, younger than Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols were when they signed their mega-deals. Cano will want to get paid.
What do the Yankees pay him? I’ve wondered if the Yankees should let Cano walk when he’s a free-agent before, if the Yankees should let some other team pay him the huge cash as he enters his mid-thirties. Now, a Cano-less Yankees seem unimaginable. Now that Derek Jeter‘s wOBA has fallen back to .334, now that Nick Swisher‘s OBP is just .336, now that A-Rod’s SLG is just .437 the idea of letting the best offensive Yankee (and by a huge margin) walk is absurd.
Cano’s cost is not a trivial question. The Yankees themselves are larded up with bad deals, from Mark Teixeira‘s to A-Rod’s. Apart from Derek Jeter’s mega-deal, very few of the super contracts have worked out when the superstar player hits his mid-thirties. Everything therefore says that the Yankees should cut and run with Cano, even if it means losing out on three more productive seasons. Better to hand those seasons to another team than risk paying Robbie for the five lousy season that will follow.
Unfortunately, from this current vantage point that logic (and it is logical) seems too cold-blooded and reckless to execute. Unless something awful happens the rest of this season or in 2013 the Yankees will offer Robbie a new contract, and it will make him even wealthier than he is now. At his current pace, that seems like the right move, even if it means Cano is paid like a superstar when he turns 36 and probably can’t cut it anymore. He’s not just powering the Yankees. He’s turning into the team’s best second baseman since Willie Randolph, which is to say ever. The Bombers don’t let those kinds of players walk away. As a fan, I agree, even if the arm chair GM in me cringes. Hopefully they get Robbie for five and $125 million, instead of something closer to eight and $200 million.
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20 Responses to The (100?) million dollar question
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TIQ IQ
I’ve always assumed that
1) It will cost in the neighborhood of $170-200m to retain Cano
2) The Yankees will retain Cano
3) If they intend to stay under $189m I’d rather they let him walk. We’ve already seen how these contracts work out in A-Rod and Tex’s situations. How often does a team ever not regret a mega contract? Second baseman historically don’t age very well, the odds are stacked against Cano continuing to produce at a high level, and he doesn’t have a skillset that ages gracefully. His production would be very hard to replace but let some other team make the mistake, we’ll benefit in other ways from having more flexibility
no way is he gonna cost that much, Pujols and Rod are exceptions because they have top 10 of all time arguments; Cano doesn’t. Also everyone else who have gotten that kind of money were 28 at the oldest.
I have thought for a long time Cano will sign for 6 and around 120
As far as how does a team not regret a mega deal. Texas may have regretted it, but Alex’s first contract was just fine in terms of value and production. He won 3 MVPs in the course of that deal and put the ground works down for what could have been judged a hall of fame career during that span alone.
If the cost of retaining Cano is $170mm+ then, by all means, for the love of god, I hope the team lets him walk. If Cano were 28 at the time of his free-agency, maybe I’d feel differently, but he’ll be 31 going on 32, and it would all down hill. The Yankees would reget the end of such a contract.
I have to agree with the other comments. At age 31, it’s not even close to a sure bet of getting 3 great years from Cano, and there will be no room to move him off second base if it becomes necessary, as it likely will. If the Yankees intend to get under the $189 million cap every few years, they won’t be able to carry a bunch of bad long-term contracts.
Bad long-term contracts are becoming the new market inefficiency. The Yankees have already gotten way over value with Cano. They may be better off quitting while they’re ahead.
They might be able to move Cano to 3rd base later in his contract (coinciding with an Alex Rodriguez move to DH). Cano’s arm probably won’t be as big of an asset at 3rd, but he could be adequate there, and his range would likely be better than that of an aging A-Rod.
That’s a thought.
This is what I have always thought the end game would be with Cano. He has the arm to justify it, and his range in the outfield probably wouldn’t be close to good enough to justify that move.
To me, the sub-text of this discussion is the failure of the Yankee organization to develop talent, whether starting pitchers or everyday stars. Cashman has been running this show for more than five years; the recent drafts and amateur signings have happened on his watch. If the Yankees find themselves with no alternative, talent-wise, to a player who will be 32 years old who demands a seven-year deal, the situation demands accountability from the GM who failed to put adequate replacement talent in the pipeline. The team will end up re-signing Cano and overpaying for his decline years just as it has for A-Rod (admittedly NOT Cashman’s doing!) and Texeira.
Its hard to say the Yankees cant develop pitching with Hughes and Nova in the rotation both pitching very well. The issue has been with every day players. Cano is the last everyday player the Yankees developed that is currently playing for them.
I’m not going to sit here and blame Cashman for that though as it was above him, where the decisions to neglect the minor leagues came from. THey have been trying to rebuild the minor league system since Cashman got full control. His task is very hard if not impossible. The Yankees pick last or next to last every year, and outside the top 10 picks, its a complete crap shoot as very few of those players go onto major league success, let alone stardom, which is required to play for the Yankees.
The fact that the Yankees have had a chance to win the WS for the last 20years straight says they have been doing something right.
To indict the Yankees for not having a replacement for Cano in the minors is pretty silly. There are no replacements for Cano and his production at second base. I really dont understand fans like you. Do you really expect the Yankees to pick last in the draft year after year, and then have a minor league system stacked with future all star/ hall of fame players?
If Cano hits the open market, I can see the Yankees loosing him as all it will take is one crazzy ass owner to give him so much money that the Yankees have to walk away, do to the way too much money they gave A-rod.
Maybe I don’t know what “very well” means, but since when is a 4.29 ERA, 4.58 FIP, 4.10 xFIP “very well”? It’s OK, but certainly not good. It’s a pretty average 4th starter, or pretty bad 3rd starter.
Hughes gets more credit for being an average starter than any Yankee pitcher I can ever remember.
Hughes has pitched a lot better than that recently. No, he can’t disown the early bad outings but he seems to have made great strides since then in his repertoire, command and efficiency.
He’s still “on probation” in my mind but don’t deny him credit for what he’s done.
That’s what Hughes is. He’s 1 great game, 1 terrible game, and 2 mediocre games every month or so. He’s a middling to low 4 ERA pitcher, 270 innings between this year and 2010 should prove that.
NOTE TO YANKEE OWNERSHIP: Please no $200M contracts to players exiting their prime.
I think that they should try to sign Cano after this season, not 2013. If a reasonable deal, like your suggested 5 years, $125M, could be worked out, great. (I doubt it can with Boras.) If no trade, trade Cano and get a better return than one draft choice.
I’d try the same thing with Granderson.
OK, trade him where and for who? Prospects? Teams with the best prospects are typically not those who will be willing and/or able to pay Cano. And since he will be a FA, his return value in prospects or established players will be lower than his value would otherwise suggest.
So what you’d be left with is more or less a salary dump for B-level prospects (or better prospects who are further away from MLB) and perhaps a marginally useful MLB asset. I can’t see the Yankees doing that and it doesn’t really make sense unless you’re in a rebuilding mode and the Yankees are not going there.
Yes, in general players decline in their 30s and apparently second basemen have not fared well in this respect historically (I’m not actually familiar with the evidence on the 2B-men).
However, too many of you are treating these trends as if they are the baseball equivalent of Newton’s Laws of Motion. They are not. None of us really know how Cano will perform if given a long-term contract or if he won’t remain useful at another position or as a DH if he’s no longer available to play 2B.
Also, not spending the money on Cano and going cheap for a replacement means spending at least some of it in another area, most likely starting pitching. There’s at least as much risk in either a free-agent or salary dump trade acquisition of a pitcher or other position player as there would be in re-signing Cano.
Unless the demands are really unreasonable (Pujols or Fielder years and money), I’m for bringing back Cano.
Some of it would go to other areas yes, but a large portion of it would not be going back into the payroll. Not re-signing Cano is as much about getting under the 189 million dollar cap we have, as it about avoiding the inevitable decline of player in his mid 30′s.
I don’t think Cano will get 200+ million but I could see 150 over 8 years easy.
So the plan is to give up 3-4 productive years of Cano so Hank and Hal can boost their bottom line? That’s going to be kind of a tough sell to the Yankee fan base. They’re used to The Boss, not Carl Polhad.
Welcome to the New Yankees. Hal has made it perfectly clear he likes to win, but he wants to make money and views the Yankees as a business first and foremost. He isn’t going to lose money just so we can compete for a WS instead of the ALCS.
The 189 million dollar budget cap is extremely real. I still get the feeling most Yankee fans think they’ll just give up on that sooner rather than later, I just don’t see that. There are some serious financial reasons to get below 189 at least for 1 year, and even more to stay at the level for several years to come. The Yankees are still going to spend money, but the 200 million dollar payroll is going to be gone for a least a short time.
I don’t disagree with you regarding Hal and his motivations – he’s made that clear. But the biggest chunks of the payroll are A-Rod, Tex, CC, Jeter and Mo. Mo will be around for one more year, Jeter for 2, Tex for 4, A-Rod for 5 and CC for 5.
So there’s no significant salary relief for 4-5 years and most of the payroll will be tied up in declining players. If they’re basically going to do salary dumps for Swisher, Cano and Granderson then the core of the team will be in their dotage years with any help from the farm probably not ready for 2-3 years.
All I’m saying is that it’s going be tough to sell that in New York, especially at the prices the Yankees want to charge. If the money they save makes up for the decline in revenues then I guess it works out for the Stein-brothers. But they better hope that the next Jeter, Bernie, Mo and Andy are not far behind.