This is the first in the guest column series. It is written by Dan Forti. You can check him out at Boulevard NYC, “an ongoing collaborative effort that strives to bring anyone with a creative vision together.”

Having been a die-hard Yankees fan since 1996, not too much surprised me during the 2007 off-season. Posada, Rivera, and A-Rod all threatening to leave, but then re-sign? It didn’t catch me off guard. I was even prepared for Joe Torre’s surprise departure, feeling that it was time for an amicable end to the great Torre Dynasty. However, the one move that I am still surprised about, and upset over, is the loss of our former third base coach, Larry Bowa.

Before his stint with the Yankees, the average fan knew Bowa as the eccentric manager of the Philadelphia Phillies from 2001-04. While his teams had strong players such as Bobby Abreu, Pat Burrell, Jim Thome, and Jimmy Rollins, each year they underperformed. Bowa’s fiery personality and in-your-face style of coaching wore down many of his players halfway through each season, and in 2004 Bowa was let go.

In comparison, Bowa’s playing career was very successful: He won two Gold Gloves, led the NL in fielding percentages in six different seasons, and shared the left side of the infield with Hall of Famer Mike Schdmit. Every person who played with Bowa respected him for his passion for the game, as well as his dedication to his craft.

During the 2005 season, Bowa’s knowledge for the game became apparent through his daily TV appearances on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight. Bowa always provided objective and concise analysis, while adding a little bit of his own flare to each show. When Bowa jumped from BBTN to the Bronx, many wondered how his personality would fit in with Torre’s calm regime.

I could never have imagined the impact that Bowa would have on this team. He was the best third base coach the Yankees ever had during the Torre Dynasty. Fans who are watching on television usually have a good idea of whether a runner at third should be sent home (various camera angles and instant scouting reports help). During Bowa’s stay at third, there was not one play that I disagreed with his decision (compare that to Luis Sojo’s miserable performance in the same capacity). He helped the Yankees get those extra runs, which we’ve always needed with our unreliable pitching.

Bowa’s impact could not only be seen during each game, but also during the course of the entire season. Within days of being hired by the Yankees, Bowa reached out to the team’s young second baseman, offering to be a mentor of sorts and to help him reach his untapped potential and abilities. Three weeks later, at 7:30 AM on a Tuesday morning, Bowa was hitting ground balls to Robinson Cano on an infield in the Tampa Complex. Each morning, for over an hour, Bowa would have one-on-one sessions with Cano, working on fielding groundballs, turning double plays, and mastering footwork. Bowa saw the player Cano could be, and recognized that a little of his ‘tough love’ could work wonders for the Dominican kid.

Two years later, Cano has evolved into an All-Star. He is one of the top hitting second basemen in the league, and is an underrated fielder (few others can turn a DP like Cano). Some critics believe that Cano’s early-season slump is so bad because Bowa isn’t there to keep the second baseman’s head straight. Early in his career, Yankee fans have noticed that Cano is prone to mental lapses. But Bowa found a great young man in Cano, and I am confident that the two are constantly on the phone, discussing game situations and methods to endure the mental wear of a 162 game season.

Although Bobby Meachem seems to be an adequate replacement as third base coach, I’m confident that the Yankees miss Bowa’s presence in the clubhouse. Joe Girardi has more intensity than Torre, but will always play second fiddle to Bowa and his ability to fire up a team. His coaching style may never be conducive to be a manager, but the Los Angeles Dodgers have one of the best coaches in baseball.

Photo by Al Lerner

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Robinson Cano’s pathetically slow start has seemingly been the topic du jour around RAB tonight. While Joe touched on it yesterday, I want to revisit it briefly today.

After going 1 for 4 yesterday, Cano raised his average to a whoppin .155 with a .212 OBP and a .236 slugging. But things aren’t bad for Cano; he’s just been really, really unlucky. Or at least that’s what the folks at Pinstripe Alley say. Take a look at this table, originally produced by jscape2000 on PA:

Joe noted many of these numbers yesterday, and the trends are encouraging. As jscape wrote, “Robinson Cano hasn’t been the worst player in the league, just the most unlucky.
We’d expect BABIP to be LD% plus .120. Robbie’s expected BABIP is .284, his actual is .156.”

In other words, Cano’s slow start seems to be a case of his hitting the ball not where they ain’t but where they are. Furthermore, Cano’s not swinging any earlier in counts than he ever has. He has seen 3.40 pitches per plate appearances. That’s down 0.02 from last year and up by 0.18 over his 2006 totals.

At some point, the balls Cano is hitting will begin to fall, and his average will rise. The Yanks could really use those breaks.

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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.

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For some reason or another, Robinson Cano has developed a reputation as a “lazy” baseball player. Keeping in shape has seemingly been a struggle for him, and Larry Bowa, who left with Joe Torre to join the Dodgers, rode Cano hard last year to stay in shape. While Bowa is offering cross-country encouragements to Cano, I’m not too concerned. The Yanks have a staff of professionals and two men - Tony Pena and manager Joe Girardi - who aren’t afraid to make the team work. Robinson Cano will be just fine.

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From Ken Rosenthal: The Yanks are close to a four-year deal with Robinson Cano. This would buy out all of his arbitration years for $30 million. Rosenthal says that the contract will include an option or two that will allow the Yanks to buy out some of Cano’s free agency.

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Over at Rays Anatomy, they’re having a debate regarding Robinson Cano and BJ Upton. Anatomy’s writer Eric SanInocencio takes on Pending Pinstripes author EJ Fagan. They each make strong cases, so I’d consider the initial round a toss-up. However, the debate raging in the comments is all Cano. Someone actually said they’d rather have Brandon Phillips than him. Pass that crack pipe this way, please.

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We would like a more reliable hosting company for RAB. Robinson Cano would like a long-term deal. I bet we get what we want first.

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On Saturday, I looked at Robinson Cano’s arbitration case and decided that the Yanks should give him what he wants instead of bickering over money year after year. Today, David Pinto shares with us the news that the Rockies have locked up Troy Tulowitzki to a six-year, $30-million deal, thus buying out his arbitration years. Tulo probably would be making more if he chose arbitration every year, but the two sides believed this to be a better path. That seems to me to be a much better approach to signing long players than the Yanks’ one-and-out philosophy.

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We don’t write too frequently about Robinson Cano. Our four sparse posts about the Yankees’ young second baseman are chock full of some of our better analysis, but we’ve also written just four posts about such Yankee luminaries as Jose Molina and Edwar Ramirez. It’s not about the numbers.

We don’t write much about Robinson Cano because there’s not much to say. For the better part of three seasons, this kid — and yes, I’m calling someone a few months older than me a “kid” — has hit the tar out of the baseball. At the tender age of 25, Cano has 1728 Major League plate appearances and a career offensive line of .314/.346/.489. The Yankees have a middle infielder who, at 25, has a career OPS of .835 and a career OPS+ of 117.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that players like Robinson Cano do not grow on trees. If you look, historically, at how second basemen who have played more than 300 games at their position before their age 25 season have fared, you will find that a grand total of five of them had a higher career OPS+ than Robinson Cano. Four of them are in the Hall of Fame — Eddie Collins, Joe Morgan, Tony Lazzeri and Rod Carew — while Larry Doyle, the other one, is a bubble candidate for Cooperstown.

Furthermore, just to drive home the point, Cano’s 509 career hits rank him 89th overall among all players up through their age 24 seasons since the Expansion Era began. Derek Jeter, 588 hits through age 24, is 51st on this list. Not too shabby.

Now, as we know, these age comparisons aren’t predictive. They serve to tell us simply what a player has done in an historical context and not what he will do for the next five, ten or even fifteen seasons. That said, Robinson Cano is in some pretty elite company right now.

So when faced an arbitration situation with their young stud, what do the Yankees do? Well, as I see it, they seem to have lowballed Cano. The Yankees, who will be paying Jason Giambi well over $20 million in 2008, offered Cano $3.2 million. The second baseman is seeking $4.55 million, a seemingly modest total for the player Rob Neyer just ranked as his most desirable second baseman.

The Yankees, as they’ve shown over the years, are loathe to give out multi-year contracts to players during their arbitration years. For a team that spends money so freely, they are rather conservative with their players when they don’t have to spend the dough. Instead, the Yankees seem more keen on waiting to make sure these players justify their annual investments. As Derek Jeter and his contract history shows, the Yankees are happy to reward their own when free agency nears but not a moment sooner.

Earlier this winter, when Cano’s name popped up in the Santana trade rumors, I was vehemently against that idea while others reading were in favor of it. Based on what I see from Cano and what I see others of his ilk have accomplished in their careers, the Yanks could have the next Hall of Fame second baseman on their hands. Of course, they could also have the next 27-year-old burnout; just ask Carlos Baerga about that one.

For right now though, if the Yanks are going to play the one-year contract game with Cano, they should be willing to go beyond $3.2 million as an initial figure. Why lowball a kid with a bright future and potentially ruin a relationship over what amounts to small beans for the $200-million team? That doesn’t sound like smart baseball to me.

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Not a huge milestone, but today is the day teams and players exchange arbitration figures. Wilson Betemit, Chien-Ming Wang, Brian Bruney, and Robinson Cano are due raises. Teams and players can negotiate contacts up until the hearing, so today is just a formality. As PeteAbe notes, the Yanks never give out long-term contracts to arbitration guys. They even went to a hearing with Derek Jeter before the ‘99 season — and lost.

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