Once again, there weren’t any homers for Robinson Cano yesterday.
Cano is in the midst of some slugging woes, and while he reached base twice yesterday with a single and a walk in the Yankees’ 5-4 loss to the A’s, he’s now homerless in 43 at-bats. The superstar second baseman hasn’t homered in his last 10 games — Sept. 12 was his last time going deep — and has just one homer in his last 17 games.
Cano has 30 home runs this season, a career-best. So where has the thunder gone?
Cano’s power was streaky to start the year, as he blasted only one homer in his first 27 games. He then crushed 19 in his next 51 games. Still, teams may be fearing Cano less than they had been. In Saturday’s sixth inning, the A’s wanted nothing to do with Alex Rodriguez and everything to do with Cano. With a runner on second base and one out, Oakland opted to intentionally walk Rodriguez in order to face Cano.
Considering Cano is the Yankees’ best hitter and not only did Oakland try to face him but the A’s also put another runner on base for his turn at the plate. It was a rare move, but Cano promptly grounded into an inning-ending double play.
Beyond the statistics, Cano also played lackadaisically on Saturday — more than once. In the second inning, he did not run hard after hitting a ball to second base (he reached on an error). Later, in the seventh, Cano didn’t appear to give full effort on Brandon Moss’ slowly-hit grounder that snuck past a diving Nick Swisher — the ball ended up going into right field for a single.
Cano has had issues with effort before — particularly earlier in his career — but this is still troubling. Especially since he’s since gotten older and emerged as the team’s best all-around player.