If you have not been reading Joel Sherman’s daily 3 UP, 3 DOWN columns on his Hardball site, this is the kind of stuff you have been missing:
1. Chien-Ming Wang had what we might remember as transformative outing on Sunday against the Rays. That is because he was more than a sinkerball pitcher and â because of that â he was more than a groundball pitcher. He struck out six and each of the finishing pitches was either a split or a slider that drew a swing and miss. Wang followed a pretty set pattern in this game. He worked his hard sinker in to both lefties and righties, a pitch with such downward bite that Tampa manager Joe Maddon referred to it as âa bowling ball.â Then when he was ahead of hitters, he would expand both his repertoire and the strike zone with the sliders, splits and even an occasional changeup.
Wang has been among the majorsâ most successful starters since his arrival early in the 2005 season. Yet he has not received much love because he is not a strikeout pitcher. From 2005-2007, among pitchers who worked at least 500 innings, Wang had the second lowest strikeouts-per-nine-inning rate at 3.83 (Carlos Silva was at 3.63). That leaves Wang at the mercy of his defense, specifically his infield defense. And when Derek Jeter is not moving well, Wang becomes more vulnerable. And when you get hitters who see Wang more and more often, or can gear up for him in the playoffs such as the patient Indians last season, the rightyâs effectiveness comes into question.
This is why the Yanks have wanted Wang to expand his inventory, to work on the secondary stuff to give opposing hitters different pitches to have to catalogue and worry about. The Rays scored 19 runs in the first two games against the Yanks, but managed just two hits and no runs in six innings before Wang grew weary in the seventh.
I actually believe Wang can add one other pitch to his repertoire and that is a four-seam fastball he throws up in the zone. Right now everything he throws has strong downward action â sinker, slider, split and changeup. Wang is no junk-ball sinker pitcher. He throws in the low to mid-90s. And I believe that in favorable counts â 0-2, 1-2 â he can go for a strikeout every once in a while by changing eye levels by throwing hard above the belt and getting unsuspecting hitters to chase.
2. I have had a long-running debate with many scouts who claim that Robinson Cano is not that good of a defensive player. Now let me tell you a dirty secret: Some scouts form an initial opinion of a player and donât let what unfolds in front of them over time ever change that opinion. And some scouts simply do not watch the games they are being paid to observe closely enough. Because if they were not prejudiced by some of the sloppy stuff Cano might have done in the minors or early in his career and/or they were good at their jobs and really watching the games, they would notice that Cano is a legit Gold Glove candidate.
Can he still lose concentration on a routine play and swell his error totals because of it? Yeah. But not nearly as much as early in his career, and just about never in a close game. In fact, in a close game, his calm hands are probably the ones you want the ball hit to if you are a Yankee fan.
But more than anything Cano is a well above-average defender because he creates outs from out of nowhere that more than make up for the occasional mental lapse. This is the major leagues and you need defenders to be able to make plays that are beyond the scope of an average player. And Cano does that more regularly than anyone else on the Yankees. That chopper over the pitcherâs head that often lands in no-manâs land for a hit: Cano is stupendous on that play, mainly because of his ability to throw from multiple angles and on the move with juice on the ball. For the same reason, he completes double plays that few others would even attempt off of pivots. And he is as accurate and hard-throwing a relay man to the plate of any second baseman I have ever seen.
On Sunday, he made the kind of play that saves games. It was the seventh inning, the Yankees led 2-0 and Tampa had first and third with one out. Shawn Riggans hit a liner off Joba Chamberlain toward the middle. You are thinking RBI single and still first and third. Cano is not fast, but he is extremely quick on defense, and on this he took three lightning steps to his right and snared the ball, and this is where his specialness as a defender took over. Like a basketball player falling out of bounds and throwing a no-look pass to an open cutter, Cano in one motion after catching the ball, whipped the ball across his body â capitalizing on that splendid arm strength â and made an accurate, one-hop throw to first that Wilson Betemit dug out to complete an inning-ending double play.
Watch Cano during the season and you will see how many times he turns what should be safe bases for the opposing team into outs.
3. You know one of the most important weeks in recent Yankee history was: The one that spanned late April-to-early May 2005 when the Yanks reached down to the minors and summoned both Wang and Cano. That came when the Yanks were a lifeless veteran team teetering toward a calamitous season. It also came with the Yankee farm system essentially viewed as devoid of meaning by rivals. And it also came with George Steinbrenner turning to Brian Cashman and saying, OK, fix a mess that was not completely of the GMâs doing. Cashman determined that if he was authorized to make the decision alone, he would stop trading the best of the farm for fading, stopgap vets and would see what Wang and Cano could do. That led to Cashman receiving a three-year extension after the season and greater powers to run baseball operations. An organization-wide philosophy was born to concentrate more on rebuilding the pipeline with top talent. What is lost a bit in all of this is just how excellent the two players â Wang and Cano â are who were called up in that week. From a system that was supposed to have had little to no talent, the Yanks summoned two players who have proven to be of All-Star ability.