Major League Baseball

Cano willing to be flexible for Yankees

Published Feb. 28, 2011 12:00 a.m. ET

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Bob Klapisch

Robinson Cano places a hand on his heart when he says he’s not campaigning for the No. 3 spot in the Yankees’ lineup. The second baseman has no desire to complicate Joe Girardi’s life, so if Mark Teixeira starts the season in the three-hole, then Cano says, “That’s OK with me.”

Cano’s good-guy pledge aside, does it really make sense for the Yankees to keep their best hitter buried in the No. 5 spot? That’s one of the more intriguing questions in camp, right alongside where Derek Jeter belongs — should his decline phase roll into a second straight summer.

No one’s expecting Girardi to go near either issue, as both Teixeira and Jeter are both being afforded wide berths. There’ll be no radical changes in the Yankees’ batting order before June at the earliest. Still, a hypothetical offer to flip-flop with Teixeira makes Cano slightly woozy; it’s like watching Hannibal Lecter in the straitjacket. Cano smiles and says, “Man, I wish.”

Here’s why: Scouts say Cano has the necessary combination of power, bat-speed and pedigree to assume the No. 3 spot, traditionally assigned to the lineup’s most talented hitter. Cano batted 63 points higher than Teixeira last year, a gap that was most notable in April.

Cano batted a thunderous .400 with eight home runs. Teixeira, meanwhile, was bogged down in his traditional first-month blues, practically buried under a .136 average. He struggled to get back to the outer margins of respectability, finishing with a .256 mark, but it’s fair to say Teixeira is under pressure to avoid another early slump.

So far in camp, the Yankees say, there’ve been positive results from Teixeira’s maniacal offseason training regimen. Hitting instructor Kevin Long says the first baseman “is on a mission” to improve his career .236 mark in April.

If not, Cano is waiting, although the team’s hierarchy is sensitive to the ramifications of a switch. One insider says, “You do that to Tex, and there’s a good chance he takes it badly. It’ll end up bothering him the rest of the season.”

In fact, there’s a perfectly sound counterargument to leaving the lineup as is: The Yankees won a world championship in 2009 with the current alignment and led the majors in runs in 2010, despite Teixeira’s struggles. So when Cano says, “I can hit anywhere” in the lineup, he says so out of respect not just to Girardi but to his teammate, as well.

Still, the thought of getting better pitches to hit in front of Alex Rodriguez isn’t just tempting to Cano, it’s overwhelming. He admits he’s still too impatient, falling victim to pitchers who figured out by midsummer the way to sabotage his beautiful swing is to get him to chase out of the zone.

That was the surcharge for hitting in front of No. 6 Jorge Posada last year — Cano saw the lowest percentage of strikes (62.8) of his career. His frustration and impatience accounted for the highest percentages of swings at pitches out of the strike zone (36 percent, a 20 percent jump from 2010).

Cano was never quite the same after April and May (.336). He failed to reach .300 in each of the final three-plus months of the season, which only made his final numbers so impressive.

Cano finished with career bests in home runs, RBI and slugging percentage, not to mention a third-place finish in the AL’s MVP voting. Cano did all that while breaking Long’s rules about staying back, keeping his head still and waiting for the most hittable strike in every at-bat.

“One thing is to get (Cano) to stop jumping at the high-velocity fastball,” said Long. “That’s a pitch that got him at times because he’d jump at it, he tends to think he has to jump and get going in order to catch up, and he doesn’t.”

“I’m trying, I’m trying,” Cano says in response. “I know it’s something that I still have to work on. That’s why I work so hard, because I want to be the best I can be. I look at Alex and (Albert) Pujols, the great ones. They got there not just because of their talent but because they worked hard, too.”

A-Rod has been a mentor of sorts to Cano, funneling his talent into a steady blur of drills and extra batting practice sessions. It’s not uncommon for the two to spend an hour in the cage after practice, each taking an extra 100 swings. Cano acknowledges, “People used to think I was lazy because of the way I looked when I played, but I’m not. I want to prove that I’m not.”

Cano’s payback would be to stay in the No. 5 spot, where he provides critical lineup protection for A-Rod. The third baseman, eight years older, needs Cano more than the other way around — he is closer to his own decline phase (which, yes, he does worry about) and more prone to droughts, especially in hitting home runs.

Cano is obviously talented enough to hit anywhere, but scouts envision the day he becomes a 40-home run, 135-RBI force. Cano is more likely to achieve that in the No. 3 spot, but he’s not saying a word. That thin smile, however, is a dead giveaway.

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