With a wet and chilly Saturday serving as a fitting backdrop, the Mets’ spring training truck posed for one last shot at Citi Field before heading for Port St. Lucie. There, to enhance the photo opportunity, stood three important Mets: Edwin Diaz lowest to the ground, then Robinson Cano, then Jeff McNeil.
Fitting, too, that Cano stood in the middle.
You name a storyline surrounding these 2020 Mets, and you’ll find Cano in the center of it. Hence, one of the key questions for this club can be posed, quite simply: Can the center hold?
“Last year, I got a couple of injuries. I got hit five times in the hands,” Cano said during the Mets’ FanFest. “That’s not an excuse, but it’s not the same when you have pains or anything like that. I went home and prepared, got my legs stronger and tried to prevent what happened last year. Hopefully, it doesn’t happen again.”
The second baseman discussed this in response to a question of whether he could duplicate his performance with the 2018 Mariners, to which Cano initially smiled and replied: “Yes, for sure. Why not?”
In 80 games with the ’18 Mariners, Cano had a slash line of .303/.374/.471. In 107 games with the ’19 Mets, those numbers plummeted to .256/.307/.428. He did sustain a few hits to his hands, as he said, and the former iron man spent three stints on the injured list with left quadriceps and left hamstring issues. Throw in some ill-timed failures to hustle out grounders — as well as one ill-timed, unnecessary hustle that resulted in his first IL stay — and Cano’s first year as a Met proved downright disastrous.
Entering his age-37 season, less than a year younger than his new manager, Luis Rojas, He is joined at the hip with his general manager, Brodie Van Wagenen, his former agent who brought him here in a trade that imploded in year one like the “Cats” movie and has Cano under contract here through 2023.
He championed the hiring of Rojas, his fellow Dominican Republic native, after getting to know him last season and playing for Rojas’ legendary dad Felipe Alou in the World Baseball Classic. He helped beleaguered closer Edwin Diaz, who accompanied him here from Seattle, connect with Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez over the winter.
As for the Astros sign-stealing scandal that jettisoned Carlos Beltran from the Mets manager’s office before even getting to spring training and landed Rojas in place? Not only did Cano play for the 2017 Mariners, facing Beltran’s scheming, title-winning Astros 19 times, but he also knows something about rule breaking, having served an 80-game suspension in 2018 for violating the game’s illegal performance-enhancing drug protocol.
“Honestly, I don’t have [any] comment on that,” Cano said of the big Astros news. “I didn’t see anything back then. What else can I say? I let MLB decide and do whatever they have to do.”
Can Cano do what he has to do? Can he rediscover his past excellence legally while enhancing Rojas’ stature rather than sinking it, as he did last year with Mickey Callaway? If, like most 37-year-olds, he does continue on a downward trajectory, can he handle a decrease in playing time with diplomacy? Do the Mets possess the depth to handle that, given that they have Jeff McNeil penciled in for a lot of third-base time, J.D. Davis is a defensive liability at third and Jed Lowrie missed nearly all of last year with injuries?
“For me, every year is important,” Cano said. “I’m blessed to still wear this uniform. I just want to go out there and help this team win a championship.”
With a new owner on the way in Steve Cohen, this season looks particularly important for Cano and everyone in his orbit. Which is essentially everyone in the Mets’ universe. Can the center hold? We’ll start to get the answer once Cano meets that truck down in Florida.
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January 26, 2020 at 06:37AM
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Robinson Cano is center of Mets universe with so much at stake - New York Post
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