This is a written by good friend and Website contributor (Cow Boy)George Clancy. Life Long Yankee Fan and current angry man/former bleacher season ticket holder. Please excuse any format errors bc i am an idiota-Jeff
Resign Cano????????
As the Yankees head into the offseason, there are many questions regarding which direction the team should take regarding resigning and acquiring players. With the ownership pushing for getting under the 189 million budget to avoid paying heavy luxury taxes, there are some important decisions coming up in the next couple of months, the most important being Robinson Cano’s upcoming free agency.
In past years, resigning Cano would be a no brainer for the organization. Cano is a home-grown talent and has put up all-star numbers at a middle infield position in which power hitting is a rarity. He is a slick fielding second baseman with a left-handed swing that is tailor made for the short right field porch at Yankee Stadium. In his last three seasons, he has accumulated 20.7 WAR and has hit .309/.371/.55 while batting in the middle of a lineup filled with aging stars and stop gap replacement players. King George would have basically handed Jay-Z a blank check and there would be a press conference scheduled in November to make the announcement. Yet, with the murky future of the Yankees organization, it doesn’t make sense for the Yankees to resign Cano. There is 31 million dollars of cap space that the Yankees are unsure of having, depending on what happens with A-Rod’s suspension appeal. That case will drag potentially until late December, and I doubt Cano will want to wait the market out that long and risk teams signing other options at second base instead. Cano has asked the Yankees for a ten year, 300 million dollar contract, which is insane numbers for a contract that would stretch until he is 40. With the Yankees on the hook with big contracts for A-Rod, C.C. and Teixeira, I doubt they would want to have another aging star on the books limiting their spending flexibility. Many experts see Cano signing a seven or eight year deal worth between 160-230 million. The Yankees have about 65 million dollars in their budget for free agents this offseason if they are to achieve their goal of staying under the 189 million threshold. Committing 25 million to Cano would eat up a significant amount of this money and hurt their chances of addressing other areas that clearly need to be shored up.
Aside from the money issue, there is the possibility of Cano declining rapidly while playing in his mid-thirties as well. For some reason, there are many all-star second basemen that have seen a rapid decline in their numbers as they approached their mid-thirties. Names like Edgardo Alfonso, Carlos Baerga, Marcus Giles, Chuck Knoblauch, and even Roberto Alomar are examples of second basemen that saw their numbers drop off of a cliff when they hit their mid-thirties. The last thing the Yankees need to do is get caught in another long term contract with a player with eroding skills. If the Yankees are going to commit to this 189 million dollar payroll figure, resigning Cano doesn’t make sense. They would be much better off letting him go as a free agent and getting the two compensatory draft picks from whichever team signs him. (There can be a quick turnaround with these picks, Mike Trout was drafted by the Angels using the picks they acquired from the Yankees after the Teixeira signing in 2009.) They are better off signing a player like Omar Infante and hoping that they can develop a minor league player in the future to take over at second base. As much as the Yankees tried to promote Cano, nobody was buying tickets to see Cano play baseball. He was a good to great middle infielder for the Yankees, but the inherent risks involved with signing Cano outweigh the rewards of keeping him in the Bronx with a long term contract. If the Yankees are going to commit to this fiscal responsibility, moves like not resigning Cano will have to be the norm rather than the exception for the immediate future.
Best regards
George Clancy