BOMBS AWAY: Robinson Cano watches his second-inning home run last night, the first of two he swatted in the Yankees’ 14-2 victory over the Red Sox to clinch the AL East. Cano would finish with four hits and six runs driven in on the evening. (
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Franchise player. Trademark night. Most valuable Yankee.
As Alec Baldwin said to Nicole Kidman in “Malice,” “Give the man his money.”
The Yankees are American League East champions once more, avoiding Friday’s dreaded wild-card play-in, because — to get technical — the Orioles fell to the Rays, 4-1, at Tropicana Field. Yankee Stadium roared in approval when the scoreboard flashed the result and its meaning.
Just for good measure, the Yankees hammered the Red Sox, 14-2. Game 162 couldn’t have gone any more smoothly for Joe Girardi’s crew, and now they can rest up for three days and see whether they’ll board a plane to Texas or Baltimore for Sunday’s Division Series Game 1.
Fittingly, it was Robinson Cano, the Yankees’ superstar second baseman and Autumn Avenger, who packed the biggest punch on clinching night. He led the blowout with two homers, two singles, a walk and six RBIs, the latter tying his career high for one work shift. The baseball world wonders, with anticipation, how much more he has to offer in October.
“On fire,” Joe Girardi said of his cleanup hitter. “It’s remarkable what he’s done.”
“When we needed him,” Alex Rodriguez said, “and when the country was watching, he played his best.”
“It’s a good feeling,” Cano said. “I wasn’t too good at the beginning of the season, but this has the right timing.”
That’s an understatement. Incredibly, Cano wrapped up the regular season with nine consecutive multi-hit games and 24 hits in his last 39 at-bats. In the final 12 games of the regular season, with the Yankees locked in an intense duel with Baltimore to capture the division, Cano posted an other-worldly .484 on-base percentage and a .782 slugging percentage.
“Right now,” Russell Martin said, “it’s hard to argue that he isn’t the best hitter in the league.”
He doesn’t get the most love in these parts, not with Derek Jeter mocking Father Time at age 38 and with Ichiro Suzuki the most popular new guy in ages. But you can’t really dispute that Cano, who turns 30 later this month, is the Yankees’ best player. For 2012, and for the future.
This winter, the Yankees will pick up Cano’s $15 million team option for 2013, a bargain, and then they’ll try to hammer out a long-term extension that will keep him out of free agency during the 2013-14 offseason. They should try very hard to make that reality. Seven years and, say, $154 million sounds reasonable.
Like every human being ever, Cano is far from perfect, and he has a gift for annoying large segments of Yankees fans. Yup, he occasionally fails to hustle on balls he hits. He more than occasionally makes his work seem so effortless that it strikes raw nerves.
But by golly, all you must do is look around the game and ask yourself: Is there a better second baseman anywhere in the game? One who compiles elite numbers season after season? One as durable?
The answer is no, and when you consider the additional X-factor of thriving in New York, you should appreciate Cano even more.
Cano hasn’t needed to be a clubhouse leader, not with Jeter still prominent, Alex Rodriguez maturing and Andy Pettitte back on the scene. However, he has carried the Yankees more than anyone else on the actual field of play.
Long-term deals always present risks. But your best bet is to go with your own players. You know their bodies, their personalities, their pros and cons. You can best anticipate what will happen in the life of the contract.
Eventually, we think, Jeter will actually get too old to be this good. His double-play partner is best equipped to become the next team icon. Maybe Cano, this hot, has the sort of postseason in him that will further endear him to the team’s October-loving fan base.
Might as well lock up Cano soon, before he raises his price tag even more. After he did so much to help the Yankees lock up another division title.