I was just exchanging emails with a loyal reader on the topic of Robinson Cano. A hot topic for sure, considering his putrid start. To this point, I’ve remained unworried. We saw a similar start from Robbie last year, and I expect he’ll turn around soon enough. But I’d like to take a look at some of Cano’s numbers from the early going, and see if anything indicates that we should be really worried.

Last night, or the night before, someone in the game thread asked why we aren’t platooning Robbie with Alberto for the time being. Simple: He’s not showing any discernible platoon splits. In a tiny, 25 plate appearance sample size, Cano is hitting .150/.320/.300 off lefties. In 89 plate appearances against righties, .151/.180/.221. For his career, Robbie is .309/.337/.498 against righties, and .292/.339/.411 against lefties. So no, I don’t think platooning him is quite the answer.

Here’s the thing that has me optimistic about a turnaround: His batting average on balls in play is .156. That is the second lowest in the entire American League. Incidentally, Giambi is the pits with .119. Last year, Cano’s BABIP was .329. In 06 it was .359, and in his rookie season it was .318. So I think we can expect that he will bring it up yet again.

Also, from April 24 through May 16 last year, he hit just .143/.176/.214. So it’s not like we haven’t seen a prolonged slump before. His line drive percentages are in line from last year (17.4% this year to 16.9% last year), as are his groundball rates (51.1% to 52.2%).

So all considered, I’m fairly confident that Robbie will swing his way out of this slump and back into our good graces in the near future.

“When I go, this team goes a lot smoother.” so said Johnny Damon almost three weeks ago. They had yet to score more than four runs in a game at that point, though the team was heading into just the sixth contest of the season. For his part, Damon had been on the interstate since the second game of the year. Considering his sluggish start in 2007, you could tell he knew the critics were breathing down his neck.

He’s had some good games since then, but it’s not until the past three games that he’s really put everything together. He’s 7 for 14 with a walk in those contests, blasting two doubles and two home runs. He’s picked up is average to .253 and his OBP to .360 — if nothing else, a testament to the fact that it’s still early, and that anyone can turn it around.

It’s easy to write off Damon’s accomplishments as a small sample size. And if someone wants to do so, it’s tough to argue. But I can absolutely see this being a prelude to a solid season by Damon. And we’re going to need it. Because what he said about the team going smoother when he goes is visible in the team’s past three games.

The book on the Yankees is that they’ll make your pitchers work. However, we have not seen this early on in 2008. As a team, they have seen just 3.05 pitches per plate appearance, after seeing 3.88 last year. Derek Jeter is particularly troubling in his hacking, seeing a hair over 2.5 pitches in each of his 25 plate appearances. Clearly, this is something that will change as the season matures. But it does begin to explain the Yankees’ current offensive drought.

We saw this from the get-go yesterday. Johnny Damon hacked at the second pitch of the game, and Derek Jeter at the third. A-Rod swung at the first pitch of the second inning. Through two frames, James Shields had tossed just 17 pitches. This is not what we’re used to seeing from the Yankees.

Things got a bit better in the third inning, though. Three of the four batters took the first pitch, and it looked like they were putting together some sort of inning before Betemit decided to try for third. In the fourth inning (when we scored runs!), four out of the six hitters took the first two pitches. Cano took the first pitch before fouling off a ton en route to a single, and Jorge took the first pitch to the warning track. So thing weren’t looking all bad.

Still, you’d like to see a bit more patience from the team in the next few games. This is quickly starting to feel like late April/May of last year, when the offense was underperforming and as a result pressing. They really seem to be lunging for balls out of the zone, and otherwise taking poor swings. There’s little left to say, other than: I hope they settle in and get into a groove.

Johnny Damon has the same idea: “When I go, this team goes a lot smoother.”

Well, then. Get to it, Johnny.

As a matter of principle, I refuse to do one a mid-season report card. You read about the team here every day (or at least we hope you do), so there’s no reason to recap half a season’s worth of posts. Plus, at this point, we all know the state of the team: we need to go on a ridiculous run to have any shot at the playoffs. And by ridiculous run, I mean two out of three every damn series. That, my friends, is the definition of “easier said than done.” These are the Yankees, though, and we all know that anything can happen.

What makes this even tougher is that many players will have to completely turn around their seasons in the second half. So imagine that you’re having a shitty season when expectations are high. You’re already under a ton of pressure. Now the pressure is magnified because the team is depending on you to stop playing shitty baseball and have a monster second half. Let me explain further.

The most uttered line this weekend is that many guys are going to have to play to the back of their baseball cards in the second half for the Yankees to make any kind of run. In particular, this means Johnny Damon, Bobby Abreu, Hideki Matsui, and to a lesser extent, Robinson Cano.

Bobby Abreu is on pace for 715 plate appearances this season; he currently sports a line of .264/.352/.373. In order to bring that up to his 2006 season (combined NY and Philly) — .297/.424/.462 — he’d have to hit, .332/.502/.561 to match that. Ain’t happening. He can still salvage the season and not reach his numbers from last year, but it will still take a .310/.450/.500 second half. He proved last year that he could do it…

We know Johnny Damon won’t hit his power numbers from last year — it was an outlier. However, his .359 OBP and .285 BA should certainly be the goals, especially if he’s in the leadoff role. Let’s then set his goal slugging at .439, his 2005 mark. He’s currently on pace for 145 games played with 597 plate appearances. To hit his .285/.359/.439 mark, he’d have to hit .329/.381/.544. Once again, not happening, but if he actually starts hitting, the BA and OBP are do-able.

For some reason, people were ripping Hideki Matsui for poor play as recently as a week or so ago. This I never understood. Yeah, he’s having a below average year by his standards, but he hasn’t been bad by any stretch. This is even more true when you compare him to the rest of our outfield. Anyway. Our purposes are best served by using Hideki’s career numbers, which are .294/.370/.482 — he’s currently at .274/.358/.464, so he’s not too far off. He’s on pace for 555 at bats. He’ll have to hit .313/.381/.502 over the remainder of the season. That is very achievable for Hideki, who should flash more power as his wrist heals more completely (I’ve heard that it’s 18 months from break to full strength recovery).

Then you have Robbie, who is hitting .274/.314/.427, which isn’t so hot. We’re not even going to discuss how he can get back to .342/.365/.525, because it’s damn nearly impossible. However, he’s hit like a beast this month. This is the Robbie we all know. He’ll have to keep up that pace in the second half. Once again, he’s demonstrated that he can do it.

We’ll touch on the pitching tomorrow. For now, I’ll leave you with the Yanks numbers this month, in which they are 5-3:

Phillips: .455/.500/.591 — who is Mark Teixeira, anyway?
Abreu: .440/.429/.640 — yeah, now just keep that pace up…
Melky: .405/.421/.514 — .328/.379/.466 since May 31
Matsui: .300/.417/.700
Jeter: .343/.410/.400
Posada: .267/.371/.333 — cooling down, but still a huge contributor
Cano: .323/.364/.645 — 3 taters last week
Damon: .200/.351/.233 — probably the worst DH in the league
Alex: .179/.281/.429 — slumped a bit, but picked it up in the Angels series

All numbers cited are as of 6/28 before the game

Oh, our outfield. Coming into this season, it looked so promising. Matsui, Damon, Abreu. And Melky as a backup to boot. Yeah, there were chirps and whispers about the age of the unit, but hey, 34 isn’t exactly old. And for guys who had been were great last year (with the obvious exception of Matsui), you wouldn’t expect them to turn shitty overnight.

But really, that’s what they did. At least in relative terms. Any way you want to slice it, they’re not performing to expectations. And it’s freakin’ killing this offense (among other things, of course, but this one is just glaring). A quick look at rate stats will make this abundantly clear.

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Back in May of 2005, we saw the debut of Robinson Cano. He wasn’t exactly a highly regarded prospect — the Diamondbacks rejected him as part of a trade-deadline Randy Johnson trade in 2004. But he tore up AAA in April, and was given the call once the Yanks realized that Tony Womack wasn’t going to cut it (which was about four and a half months after the rest of the league knew it). He ended up being an enormous upgrade, hitting .297/.320/.458 for the season, with 14 homers and 34 doubles on his way to placing second in the Rookie of the Year voting. He also struck out only 68 times in 551 plate appearances, a more than respectable 12% rate (which went along with his minor league numbers post-2002). However, one bit of criticism prevailed: the dude swings at everything.

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Somewhat lost in the Bobby Abreu/Robinson Cano debacle of late has been the performance of Alex Rodriguez. While A-Rod’s stats overall — .329/.407/.714 with 15 HR and 39 RBI — are still exception, his season has been some of a Jekyll and Hyde performance so far.

Through the first 18 games of the year, Alex Rodriguez had 75 at bats and was an absolute beast. He hit .400 with a .453 OBP and a whopping 1.053 slugging percentage. As we all know, he had 14 home runs, 7 doubles and 34 RBIs. He was hitting home runs at a pace of one every 5.36 at bats.

But in the 18 games since then, a different Alex Rodriguez has emerged. In 65 at bats, Alex has hit .246 with a pedestrian .355 OBP and a pathetic .323 slugging percentage. He has 3 extra base hits — 1 home run, 2 doubles — and just 5 RBI in this stretch of games. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 1 HR every 65 at bats.

So what’s the real Alex Rodriguez? For all of his recent struggles, A-Rod is still on pace for 68 HR and 176 RBI. If he can rediscover his power stroke soon, things will be looking up for A-Rod. He just missed in Seattle, driving two balls to the wall in the deepest parts of a vast outfield. Are we about to see another HR tear from A-Rod? It couldn’t come at a better time.

I know that these guys are rooting for April Alex to return and carry the Yankees through to the end of May. I fear that if his stroke doesn’t come back, the Yankee boo birds may return, making this summer a long one from Alex as that opt-out clause comes do.

It’s never a dull moment around these Yankees, eh?

Three in a row! That’s a winning streak. And hey, the Yanks are now in a virtual tie for second place.

It was bound to happen really. Their run differential suggests a team that should be 15-11 instead of 12-14. So now that the luck is evening out, the Yanks will begin their rise through the standings. But the outfield better start picking up the slack.

Tonight marked the Yanks’ 26th game of the season. We’re 16 percent of the way through the season, and here’s what the Yankees’ outfielders have done as a group. They’ve had 317 at-bats and are hitting .230 with a .319 OBP and a .261 slugging. They have 3 HR, 42 RBI and a whopping 16 extra base hits. Alex Rodriguez, by himself, has 22 extra base hits.

With Doug Mientkiewicz sucking up at-bats as the first baseman, the Yankee lineup basically has four spots giving them no offensive production. And in game 2 of the double-header, Wil Nieves, now 0 for 17 this year, played. It was a veritable train wreck.

But the Yankees keep on scoring runs. Their 150 runs scored is second overall to the Florida Marlins. So Derek and Alex and Jorge and Jason are picking up the slack. Right now, that’s ok, and I have to belief that Matsui and Melky and Damon and Abreu will start hitting again. When that happens, look out. This Yankee lineup will become a juggernaut.

Of course, in the meantime, I wouldn’t be opposed to trading Bobby Abreu, but that’s a discussion we’ll have tomorrow.