Steve Goldman is one of my favorite writers for all things Yankees. He wrote an intriguing piece today that basically rips apart Robinson Cano for all the right reasons. (My favorite line: “With .238/.264/.327 rates with runners on base, Cano has killed more rallies than a Brezhnev-era Warsaw Pact tank crew on a Saturday night in downtown Prague.”)

However, Steve strangely concludes his article by writing “The best plan is to forgive, at least for now, and wait.”

Goldman’s premise is if the Yanks deal Cano over the winter, they will be selling low, and they have bigger issues to deal with anyway. Both things are true, the Yanks have a lot of holes to fill. But with a potential $86 million coming off the payroll, the have a unique chance to give the team a facelift in several areas. Second base must be one of those areas.

Certainly there will be GMs who will look past Cano’s woeful .294 on-base percentage and poor 84 OPS+ and still be memorized by his talent. The Yanks should hope so. Not only is his power waning, but he needs to hit over .320 just to have a league-average OBP. Combine that with lackadaisical defense and just get what you can for him. Cano should have no part of the 2009 Yanks.

Cano is 2nd worst in the entire league in Runs Created Above Average. In fact, the Yanks have three of the top 5 WORST hitters in the league in RCAA. It’s no wonder they can’t score any runs.
(According to The Hardball Times, Runs Created Above Average is a stat invented and tracked by Lee Sinins, the author of the Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia. Lee calculates each player’s Runs Created, and then compares it to the league average, given that player’s number of plate appearances.)

WORST RCAA American League
1 Tony Pena Jr.         -26
2 Robinson Cano      -25
3 Kenji Johjima         -24
4 Melky Cabrera       -22
5 Jose Molina            -21
6 Bobby Crosby        -20
T7 Yuniesky B.         -19
T7 Edgar Renteria     -19
T9 Gary Matthews Jr -18
T9 Carlos Gomez      -18

Tags: Robinson Cano, Yankees