What's wrong with Robinson Cano?

Maybe he's unlucky? He's batting .169, with one homer on the year. His slugging percentage is .434. But here's the kicker, according to Fan Graphs he's has a line drive rate of over 20% (that's good), and a BABIP of .176. You'd think things will change for him.

Credit to poster Cowboy Popup at the Baseball Think Factory for pointing this out.

Comments

[Atheose]

What's wrong with Robinson Cano is the fact that I picked him on my fantasy team, so of course he's doing horrible now.

[Micah-SF]

Yeah, much as I hate it and wish he would just fall off a career cliff, Cano's much too good a hitter to keep this up, and some of those line drives will start falling. I wouldn't be too worried about him.

[AndrewYF]

Cano's fine. Another interesting comment is that even Damon, with a 103 OPS+, despite his .215 BA, is fine. The only guy who is not fine is Giambi. The time has come to close the book on him.

[Atheose]

Yeah, Giambi's 57 OPS+ isn't exactly stellar. Unless every at-bat of the season was against Mike Timlin, then he'd be fantastic!

[IronHorse (yf)]

I - like many yfs - have seen Cano get sloppy at the plate and swing at all kinds of stuff - head high fastballs, sliders breaking 2 feet off the plate, etc. But that is not the case with him this year. He frankly does not look at all lost to me at the plate and so I am really not at all worried about him. If anything I feel like I am seeing many mroe harmless pop-outs from him so maybe he is getting under the ball a bit, but his plate discipline - which has been the biggest gap in his game in the past - has seemed fine to me.

By the way, at some point I think Posada should just learn to throw left-handed. I mean this is getting ridiculous.

[FenSheaParkway]

maybe someone buried a Cano jersey underneath Landsdowne Street?

[Brad]

ha. He's not Dustin Pedroia. That's the biggest problem. :)

[AndrewYF]

Yeah, he doesn't throw nearly enough tantrums:

http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o262/bsadecki/pedroia.gif

[A YF]

Yeah, Pedroia will be lucky to be a major leaguer in three years time. Shoot, Lowrie is a better long-term option. :)

[A YF]

Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch: I was serious on Lowrie, joking on Pedroia (sort of). Lowrie as a switch-hitter and with more power has more going for him.

[Mark (YF)]

I agree Cano's "slump" is mostly down to really bad luck. He's fine.

But as bad as Cano's been, it's nothing compared to Giambi's mind-boggling misfortune: his BABIP is .088. His balls in play average will probably always be a about 5-10 percent below league average because of the super-shift defenses play against him, but .088 is absolutely ridiculous and simply cannot logically continue. He's still walking a lot and I think he's fine at the plate, as well. I'd be surprised if he doesn't end up being fairly productive.

[AndrewYF]

Mark - I don't know. BABIP is not a 'luck' stat independent of everything. A lot of it has to do with GB/FB/LD rates. Take a look at Giambi's rates. They are simply awful. His groundball rates are up drastically, his flyball rates are down slightly, and his line drive rates are down drastically. He's actually putting more contact on the ball than usual, but it hasn't been good contact. I think he's fallen off the cliff, personally.

[Brad]

A- that's almost funny. Almost. Take a look at the man's last year of baseball. What do you think is going to happen?
But I do agree with half of your sentiment. Lowrie is just awesome.