His celebrated power didn't appear until he moved to new Yankee stadium, and when he did his home slugging went from .448 in old Yankee Stadium to to .541 in New. He never hit 20 homers in a season until he moved to the new ballpark. Your analysis, Doc, appears spot on. Cano is a very smart hitter who adapts to his environment.
Bill James first demonstrated that there was no evidence to demonstrate lineup protection. I would have thumped this big time, about 5 years ago, with enthusiastic dogmatism. I'm a little older, hopefully a little wiser, and I am not about to ignore what even 90 percent of the warriors in the heat of battle report to me. Cano didn't have a lot of protection last season, but he did have a number of aging sluggers who all had some very excellent power seasons in their past. Cano himself in Spring Training seemed to think he needed a power bat behind him. I really appreciate you explanation of the pitcher in his rocking chair and the power of adding pressure on him. We saw what Ackley did to Lackey a couple days ago, simply by fighting off pitches.
Great stuff.
.
Q. What's this discussion about Cano's isolated power?
A. Logan a/k/a Thirteen linked us to Jeff Sullivan's article. Logan graciously called this "a good starting point for a discussion," which made Dr. D smile even before he clicked over.
Nothing Sully, or Logan, for that matter, writes is a "starting point" for a discussion. Their articles either start and finish a discussion, or maybe leave room for a couple of chapters at the end of the book.
Here's that link again. Also, if you click the Shout Box index for June 26 you'll find a stimulating debate that does kick the can down the road.
.
Q. What does the Fox article say? I've only got 5 minutes to read this article and that one.
A. That Cano never pulls the ball in the air, "with authority," any more. And that as long as this trend continues, Cano's "isolated power" (SLG minus AVG, essentially extra-base hits) will be zapped.
Among other things. (Any resemblance of the cartoon to Jeffy's article is purely coincidental. He isn't bashing.)
.
Q. Does SSI grok that this is (1) true, (2) accurate, (3) true but not accurate, or (4) true and accurate?
A. Without a doubt, Cano's approach in the batter's box is radically different in 2014. My own add would be "is this a conscious, temporary decision."
Like Logan said, we're attempting to triangulate the reality here. If the triangle gets smaller each pass, great.
.
Q. How is Cano's style different this year, as SSI sees it?
A. Two things: First of all, he is indeed taking an easy swing, an unAMBITIOUS swing, and staying WAY on top of the baseball.
Here is an MLB video from the offseason. If you just started watching Cano this year, you will not recognize the first swing on the tape (from last year).
To echo Jeffy, our second baseman is indeed thinking more like Ichiro this year, and less like Ken Griffey Jr.
.....
Also, in the side shot of the first swing, slo-mo, check out the dynamic illustration of Moe Dog's recent golf lessons.
.
Q. You said two things. That's middle ground between SSI and Fox: that he is taking a cut-down swing. What is #2?
A. The pitches to which Cano is directing his attention.
It's hard to read at this size, I know, but you have the Fangraphs site if you want to do more than just skim. The first chart gives you his swing % from 2014. The second is from last year:
Cano's chosen strike zone is shifted inside in 2014. By a whale of a lot, considering Cano's virtuosity at the plate. I mean, suppose Edgar or Ichiro changed their strike zone by moving it 7" up, down, or outside. WOW.
.
Q. Anything else different, besides the cut-down swing and the attention to inside pitches?
A. If there is, I can't find it. :- ) And that's after flipping through a whale of a lot of component stats.
There is one other thing: Cano's ISO and SLG are also down on the road in 2014. It isn't simply Safeco.
.
Q. So [swing] plus [strike zone inside-shifted] equals [what]?
A. Here's a guy who is:
(1) Getting carried away with the screen drills :- ) now that he's a hitting coach,
-OR-
(2) A guy who understands that in Seattle in April and May, you better take what you can get.
As to (1), you've heard about "extending your arms"? Cano's hands stay inside now. Of course that zaps his power. Basic physics demands a long arc for more power. How long is a 1-wood compared to a pitching wedge? Cano's using the wedge.
As to (2), don't you wish every hitter Seattle ever had, did that? As opposed to what Smoak does, overswing and then fret that it doesn't work?
.
Q. Where is Dr. D on lineup protection?
A. You will never find a player in uniform who doesn't think it affects the game. If the percentage were 90-10, that would be one thing. When it is 100.00% of every player going back to Babe Ruth, that better make us aware of our cognitive dissonance.
But! You won't be able to track it, because it isn't a question of one player protecting one player, with 7 nitwits elsewhere in the lineup. IT IS A QUESTION OF SHAKING THE STARTER OUT OF HIS ROCKING CHAIR. After a pitcher throws his 20th pitch in an inning, everybody's a .400 hitter.
Still: I don't think the protection issue has affected Cano in 2014. He comes up in the middle of a rally, the pitcher laboring, and he does the same old Ichiro shtick.
.
Q. Leaving us where?
A. SSI is fairly confident that Cano is, profoundly, adjusting his game to the April-May environment here. Thusly:
- 80% chance he's played in Safeco before, and knows what we 'net rats know (GASP!), and this is a conscious decision
- 15% chance he's unaware that he is overdoing the screen drills (PayPal about 0.1% of your salary to Jeff and me, Robby) ... -OR-
- ... that he is overreacting to the 2014 "book" to pitch him inside (they aren't pitching him much differently)
- 5% chance there's something else going on, like a sudden age decline
That 5% chance could be even lower. You've watched the games. You can see that Cano is smiling, enjoying life, and staying within himself.
Why he wouldn't be able to go back to that vicious 2013 swing, whenever he wanted to, I can't imagine. Can you?
Enjoy,
Dr D
Comments
Cano's K % has been trending down since 2011: 14.1, 13.8, 12.5, 11.1 this year so far. Back to where he sat in 2008-10, where he was 9-11%. But he's keeping the walks largely intact this year. Hmm.
His BABIP is .356 this year, vs a metronome steady ~.325 the past 5 years. Hmm.
Even if the "sudden decline" is indeed happening (I sure do hope your 5% estimate is high, as you say...). We'd be looking at 15-20 HR. Not 10 HR. Right? Seems there's got to be some deliberate decision making at play either way.
Maybe we could try not being the Mariners for once, and instead of continuing our long term experimental investigations into what constitutes the lower bound of the lineup protection theory...we could just back up our $240M man with another hitter already, and see how that goes.
We all know pennants don't mean as much when the organization isn't as efficient as the Big Blog crowd would want them to be. What good is a pennant if we can't show how smart we are?
So the question is...is he swinging at more inside pitches...or is he getting far fewer inside pitches. I think it's mostly column B. But I don't know for sure. It seems, watching the games, that they're throwing a blizzard of pitches away and he's laying off them until he is forced to defend the plate...and then taking them to left field for dink singles. The eyes can mislead though.
... then he could, and probably would, teach our entire lineup to take what they can get, no?
Great stuff Rick. Sorry I haven't been catching all the tight spirals you've been launching in here. :- )
..........
The studies that try to detect lineup protection are going to have problems with it. James himself once demonstrated, to Baseball Prospectus authors, that their "proofs" against Catcher ERA were misguided because BP's "proofs" also found NO EFFECT in computer sims that had 1.00 of CERA built into them.
I'm sure the same is true with lineup protection .... but my own point of view is that it relates to:
Continual tension on the pitcher - you need a MOTO, more than one Richie Sexson to back up one star
there is a "critical mass" point at which a terrible lineup can hurt a Corey Hart (not Robinson Cano, Edgar, Ichiro) level hitter
But, whatever :- )
HOF hitter, 210-220 lbs. of rock-hard slabs o' muscle ... total control of the zone ... demonstrated power his whole career .... Cano's going to lose his power around the time Edgar did, George Brett, all those guys.
Which is: "when they retire." Old player skills = INCREASED power.
I expected to find that very thing, but at Fangraphs they have those charts too, and the PITCHERS are not locating the ball differently.
What you and I were seeing: when it's on the black, Cano lets it go this year. In previous years, he extended his arms and launched those.
If you're talking the 4" just inside the plate. Last year that was 40-50%. Think about it: 4 out of 5 BALLS inside, Cano pulls the trigger. How extended could his arms be?!
The percentage change is similar on the outside 1/6 of the plate. He lets those go for strikes this year.
..........
In percentage terms, Cano's chosen strike zone is radically shifted in, onto his hands.
The screen drill is a KBIZLT approach, a HIT approach vs a PWR approach. He is definitely taking a 'safety first' approach, 'laying up in front of the green' as it were.
...........
But, it sez here, Cano can go back to "getting something he can drive" at any time he likes....
I'm wondering about quality control. We were discussing in a Mariner Central chat the other night (come join us!) about how unreliable the gameday pitch tracer locations are - on ESPN and CBS websites. I now totally disregard them as completely unreliable, whereas the Emerald Queen Casino tracer appears to this ROOT sports watcher as highly reliable. I'm just wondering if the data on these graphs are collected differently, because if they match what I see at the aforementioned websites, I would imagine the difference in what Cano, or anybody this season is swinging at could be explained by a different measurement this year from last. I don't remember totally giving up on those sites' tracers last season.
I'd be open to a case that Robinson Cano isn't swinging at different pitches.
........
Somebody would have to make that case, though :- ) because (1) the eye also tells you that Cano is not extending his arms, (1a) that he is swinging at pitches WAY inside, and (2) it's hard to visualize how the F/X could shift laterally by 6" in an offseason.
Easy way to answer that. We would give 20:1 odds that everybody else's chosen swings are not LH-box shifted by 6" ?
.........
By the way, most of us recall that when the M's played the Yankee$, their approach to Cano was to "exploit" him inside. Perhaps he's over-reacting to the 2014 book?
Now THERE's the kind of lineup protection theory I can get behind. The idea that adding a good hitter to a good lineup makes more of a difference than adding a good hitter to a bad lineup A) makes sense, from a "he'll get more RBI chances / good hitters will drive him in more" standpoint AND from a "the pitcher just gets tired with no mental breaks" standpoint, and B) has been demonstrated with in-game evidence. /cosign on this whole article.
... and, like LeBron says, rings don't mean much anyway.