Ramblings on Robbie

While the chatter has calmed down in the mainstream media, every so often it pops up that the Yankees should consider trading Robinson Cano. Well, this just isn't a very smart. Yes, he had a crappy year last year, but he picked it up in the second half:

First Half: .246/.285/.358/.643
Second Half: .307/.333/.482/.815

Cano is more than capable of putting up those numbers from the second half for an entire season; hell, it looks an awful lot like his 2007 season. So why did Cano have the jump? His BABIP jumped from .252 in the first half to .320 in the second. That big jump led to a lot of hits. Now, that doesn't tell the whole story, of course. Cano had a line drive percentage of 19.4 this season, which is a good mark. He also had the most line drives in his career with 104. However, he also had a career high mark in fly balls at 178 which translated to a career high fly ball percentage of 33.2%.

Based on those numbers, it appears that Cano had trouble getting on top of the ball. When a player hits a fly ball, the chances of it becoming a hit are pretty small. That career high fly ball percentage shows that Cano was probably dipping his shoulders or not driving with his lower half while at the plate. Hopefully, he and Kevin Long have worked this out with a new stance.

Since I'm big on projections and what not, let's see what CHONE has for Robbie in 2009.

.300/.340/.468/.808, 16 HR, 79 RsBI, 29 BB, 65 SO in 556 AB. That's very good for a 2B

Now let's work something out like I did in my last post and project his worth via Marcels batting projections and CHONE defense.

Cano projects to be 4.6 runs over average. Adding the positional adjustment (+2.5), that number goes to 7.1. Cano's CHONE defensive projection, 0, it stays the same. Divide by 10.5 and add 2 for the replacement adjustment and you get about 2.70 Wins Above Replacement. Multiply that by five and that's 13.5. Cano projects to be worth 13.5 million dollars. Cano is being paid $6 million for 2009. That's a big value.

So, yeah, don't trade Robbie. He's good, he's young, and he'll probably easily out play his salary.