(*) MASTER NOTES: Stay patient? Ca-NO!
Jun 12 2015
A couple of weeks back, during an appearance on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports, Kyle Elfrink was asking me how much I believed in various hot and cold-starting players. In offering my opinions on a half-dozen or so players, I reserved my clearest endorsement of any slow starter for Robinson Canó.
These radio spots don't allow for more than surface analysis, but I felt particularly good about my position on Cano: he's an elite player with a lengthy track record. There's no evidence of a hidden injury, and in fact he has a couple of examples in his recent past (last year upon arrival in Seattle, plus 2012 in New York) where he has also started slowly but then rebounded nicely. We're very leery of tagging players as habitual "fast starters" or "slow starters," but Cano might just be a slow starter.
Like I said, I felt pretty darn good about my Cano argument. And of course, in the three weeks since that radio spot, Cano has gone out and hit... .200 on the button.
And now it's mid-June. A few more weeks of poor performance accumulated for Cano, and his owners. Almost as bad as the poor performance is the missed opportunity: it seems early to be talking about how much season we have remaining, but these past few weeks represented a measurable chunk of the season that Cano had available to him to dig out of this no-longer-early hole. Cano has yet to even master the first rule of being in a hole: he hasn't stopped digging. In the language of air travel, he's using up his runway.
In taking another look at Cano's skills this week, I still see a lot of reason for optimism:
- His contact rate is down noticeably, from his traditional near-90% level down to the low-80s. But that number seems more like an effect than a cause: he started at 85% in April, then 82% in May, now just 75% in June. It's sometimes too easy to attach narrative to data, but that looks to me like a player who is recently changing his approach and pressing at the plate. In short, he's frustrated.
- When he does make contact, there's nothing wrong: his GB/LD/FB distribution is right in line with historical levels. And his hard-hit ball percentage is actually UP significantly from last year, in fact back in the neighborhood of what he posted in his much more productive 2012-13 seasons.
- Largely due to the above factors, our Expected Power Index metric (xPX) shows a large gap between expected an actual power for Cano. In short, he should have more than two HR so far.
But at some point, what should happen stops mattering. xPX probably isn't a category in your league.
We know that players don't perform linearly month-over-month: performance ebbs and flows. Cano is no exception: back in 2012, he started the year with a .267/1 HR April, then went nuts in May and June, hitting over .320 with 18 HR in those two months. By the All-Star Break, nobody was complaining about, or could even remember, Cano's rough start.
Still, that kind of spectacular pivot isn't likely here in 2015. At BaseballHQ, we're always looking for the 80% play. And here, the 80% play is that Cano's performance rebounds back toward his historical levels. That 2012 scenario, while not impossible is the 20% outcome.
So what is a Cano owner to do? Simply put, there are no good options here. And faced with only bad options, sometimes your decision-making criteria changes.
If you can free yourself from hoping for that 20% outcome, embracing that 80% outcome might open some doors for you. It would have been better to try and sell low on Cano's slow start a month ago, where his reputation and track record would have carried more weight on the trade market. But it may not be too late now... if you set your expectations accordingly. Find another weak spot on your roster, and go shopping for a reasonable fix for that hole. Don't overreach. If you can find the right target, both in terms of the player you're seeking and the other owner's risk tolerance, maybe you can strike a deal.
Is that the best move? The answer to that question may well be another question: How angry are you at Cano? Consider:
- Let's start with the premise that you are angry at Cano for not living up to your expectations.
- If you keep him and he does not have that massive rebound, you will remain angry at him all season.
- If you trade him and he does have that massive rebound, you will remain angry at him all season.
- If you trade him and he continues to disappoint, and you can get something worthwhile in the transaction, that may be the only path available that reduces your anger.
If you can find that deal that is good for your team even while eating your sunk costs in Cano, or Pablo Sandoval, or any of the other big disappointments of the first half, there is another important metric that might see a positive effect: Your blood pressure.
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