Changing Cano

From the NY Times (Tyler Kepner):

Long said Wednesday that he would travel to the Dominican Republic to work with Robinson Canó and Melky Cabrera. The Yankees have little invested in Cabrera, who lost his everyday job after struggling for most of the season. But Canó is a mystery.

In February, the Yankees signed him to a four-year, $30 million contract, making Canó the first Yankee in recent years to be awarded a long-term deal before free agency. They were convinced he was ready to become an elite player, but instead he has regressed.

Canó is hitting .261 with a meager .295 on-base percentage. He has not walked since Aug. 20, but more troubling to Long is his startling lack of power. Canó has 13 homers and a .397 slugging percentage — numbers lower than Coco Crisp, Fred Lewis and Skip Schumaker, among many others.

“He’s got big power that never plays, because there’s so much movement,” Long said. “He can’t get the barrel of the bat to the baseball with that much movement. So, basically, you’re taking a big tool and not using it.”

Canó uses an open stance, and Long said he plans to square Canó’s legs from the start. He said intensive, one-on-one sessions could help Canó the way they helped Alex Rodriguez after his disappointing season in 2006.

“Could we have done that before this year started? No,” Long said of changing Canó’s approach. “Anybody in their right mind would have said, ‘You don’t change this kid.’ He was able to dominate major league baseball to this point.”

Canó said he knew Long planned to visit, but they have not discussed specifics. Canó defended his season by saying he was “not going to be perfect every year,” but acknowledged that this has been a learning experience and said everything must improve.

“I don’t want to be back in this situation again,” Canó said. “This is a year that you can say, ‘O.K., this is not happening again.’ ”

This year and in terms of each month, Cano has never had a slugging percentage lower than .416 (not a beautiful number, but passable) except for the month of April and September (.236 and .211), so those months have really brought that number down for the season.

However, we’ve actually seen glimpses of what Cano could do when he’s right. For example, in July and August he had slugging percentages of .495 and .490 (his two highs). It’s true that, at the end of the year when you look at his final numbers, his power looks nonexistent, but that’s really not entirely true since we’ve seen it throughout the yea (it has fluctuated). He’s just had some horrible months and he’s actually finishing up with a terrible month instead of a productive one. In the past, Cano would finish with a flurry of power, causing his season slugging percentage to skyrocket, yet that just hasn’t happened this year. Is it enough for Long to tinker with his swing? I don’t know. This could just be an aberration, but Kevin Long knows what he’s doing and I’m sure he’ll right Robbie’s ship.