Seattle Mariners Season Preview: Robinson Cano

Will Robinson Cano bounce back in 2016?

The rumors that Robinson Cano was unhappy in Seattle did little to help the cause of inspiring confidence in the 2016 Seattle Mariners. What us internet folk will do well to remember is that rumors are in fact, just rumors. The baseball offseason is a dark, dark place and people that were not apart of the Seattle Mariners bustling offseason needed something to do to fill their time.

Speaking of people not involved in the Mariners offseason… One is worth mentioning and then sequentially putting to rest.  This person happens to be a particularly wordy ex-1st base coach named Andy Van Slyke. He in no uncertain terms called Cano the worst second baseman in the league and created an interesting precursor to the “unhappy in Seattle” rumors.

Cano is staying put for a good portion of the foreseeable future. Maybe thank the fact that the opt-out clause trend started in 2015 and not in 2013, or you could thank the fact that Robinson Cano is still a very, very good baseball player.

The Good:

Robbie is still one of the best defensive second basemen in the league. He has had continuously Top-10 finishes throughout his career in multiple defensive categories at second base including overall putouts, assists and double plays turned. What is most inspiring to me, amidst the sports hernia and the hate Cano received for his first-half play, his majestic second half went without much attention. His 1st half was a sad .251/.290/.370, but his second half boasted a .331/.387/.540 with a .926 OPS. Keep it mind that he did still turn around his second half with said injury. Sports hernia be gone and you can already smell the bubble gum popping while he waits in the on deck circle, waiting to hit another one of those gorgeous doubles.

The Bad:

He is entering his age 33 season. There is always a lingering fear of a decline in everyone’s mind. Not everyone ages like fine wine here people and we can probably expect to see a some kind of drop off. Since his 7.8 WAR season with the Yankees in 2012, Cano’s overall contributions have steadily declined. Again, this is a built in expectation as a player ages.

Another idle thought that seems to remain is Cano’s worth as a player. Cano is the second highest payroll earner (next to Felix Hernandez) on the Mariners roster. After the rumors that he was unhappy in Seattle surfaced, it seemed to reinforce the ideal that the Mariners paid him too much when he signed in 2013. This article by Jeff Sullivan from FanGraphs breaks down how the Mariners’ financial commitment to Cano can only be proved with time, but the worry remains that the Mariners will not benefit from this investment.

The Future:

The future of Robinson’s overall production in Seattle shows promising, thanks to FanGraphs and their predicting hearts. They show Robbie putting through a respectable, solid year in 2016. While the overall numbers show him marginally improving over last year, it is important to note that he achieved last year’s numbers because of his inflated numbers in 2nd half. Meaning that he lacked overall consistency throughout the season. This next season should see a consistent Cano contributing to exciting new Mariners lineup.

Despite the many doubts Jack Zduriencik and the remaining parts of his legacy can tend to leave in the hopes and dreams of Mariners fans everywhere, Robinson Cano should not be one of those doubts. His first half of play in 2015 had many running for the left field fences, but should not elicit any type of ill feeling. His overall OBP and wOBA still show positive trends, and should fit well within the Dipoto regime. As I said in the beginning, Robinson Cano is still a very good baseball player. He will continue to have Top-10 finishes in all defensive categories for second baseman.  He probably will never hit 30 home runs in a season again, but he will get on base and be a contributing member of the 2016 Seattle Mariners.

Robinson Cano's decline or lack thereof

The star second baseman has seen his numbers fall the last couple of seasons, but there have been reasons every time. So what does it mean?

Practical application is important. So I'm starting my look at Robinson Cano, 2016 edition, with where I took him in our slow (slooooooow) 15-team mock, currently ongoing on the site

Cano was my pick (woo!) in the fourth round, No. 53 overall. Among second basemen,Jose Altuve and Dee Gordon went earlier, with guys that qualify at the position in at least some leagues like Matt Carpenter, Brian Dozier, Anthony Rendon and Rougned Odor all going by the end of the fifth. More or less, that aligns with our consensus rankings, with Cano coming in third and the aforementioned guys following him in short order.

It's been a steady fall for Cano the last few years. Last year, he was our consensus No. 2 second baseman, and he, Rendon and Altuve formed their own three-player tier. In 2014, he was almost unanimously No. 1, with seven of eight rankers having him first.

It paints a picture of a Cano that has been on a steady decline (his OPS+, games played, doubles and select other stats have all fallen for four years running) that might or might not be fair.

We remember Cano joining Seattle for 2014, and his numbers suffering as a result. Only, as I noted at the start of last year, those suffering numbers were almost entirely power, and at that, almost entirely tied to his first half. Second-half-of-2014 Robinson Cano was exactly what we had traditionally expected for him, leading to some reason for optimism for 2015.

Which made it all the more frustrating when Cano started 2015 like he had won a "Be a big leaguer for a month" contest and had no place there. In the first half of last season, Cano hit .251/.290/.370, had six home runs, basically looked lost. If the season had ended at the All-Star break, these rankings would have Cano as a borderline top-10 second baseman at best, and even that would only have been on reputation.

Of course, Cano had his second half. In that second half, he hit .331/.387/.540. He had 15 home runs. His season-long BABIP of .316 tied his career-low for a year, but considering it was at .290 for that first half, things only went up the rest of the way.

There are reasons for the slump and subsequent improvement, of course. Or, at least, there are theoretical, correlation-without-causation reasons that could explain Cano's struggles. Cano dealt with some serious acid reflux during the first half of the season that supposedly kept him in check. At the end of the season, he had surgery to repair a sports hernia. Almost certainly, one or both of these ailments had an effect on how he played in the games.

In two seasons in Seattle, four half-seasons, Robinson Cano has disappointed twice and blown us away twice. All told, 2015 was the second-worst season of his career, with an OPS+ of 118 breaking up a five-year trend of huge numbers. Even then, his second half was Cano-esque, if not better than that.

Cano is now a 33-year-old second baseman. His numbers have held steady or gotten first for four straight years in several categories. There was a Robinson Cano who finished in the top six of the MVP voting for five straight years, from 2010 to 2014. That guy's gone.

But I got him in the fourth round of a deep mock. I picked him as the third second baseman off the board. I took him with the 53rd pick, and felt like I had won a prize. He's not the superstar he used to be. But he's among the elite second basemen still, and needs to be taken as such.