2020 (Or 2021) Will Be the Bounce Back Year For Robbie Cano, Don’t Ya Know?

So I know there isn’t much hope for a season but I think there will be baseball this year in some capacity. Even if there is not, next year this still applies in my opinion. Robinson Cano had a rough 2019, and there’s just nothing to say that he didn’t. This angered Mets fans (and I’ll be honest gave us Yankee fans something hilarious to watch), but I’d be ignoring the facts if I laughed and said “He’s never going to be good again!”. I love Robbie Cano, don’t love that he left New York and don’t believe that he was worth his contract, but his peripherals offensively show that he should be able to have a good 2020/2021 in my opinion based off of the metrics

Cano Still Has Pop In His Bat

So let’s look at his slugging percentage and why it is low at .428, it’s not the full story in my opinion. Let’s look at how hard he hits the ball, with 46% hard-hit percentage, average Exit Velocity of 90.8 MPH, and on top of that he has a solid but not great .450 xSLG. He does still hit the ball hard, and I personally believe that given the opportunity to play without injury, he can get his number up on the power side. I think you can easily see Cano get his SLG to the .460 range and have a solid amount of longballs, something the Mets would love to have out of that position.

Seeing Improvements in OBP

Cano only had a .307 OBP, the 2nd lowest in his career, and was one of the metrics that took a lot of analysts by surprise. With a career .352 OBP, it didn’t make sense to many as to how his OBP could drop so heavily after one year, even if his power was seemingly gone. This isn’t the full picture, as Cano heavily relied on hits to have a higher OBP, walking just a bit to get it up to a solid number, but by only hitting .256, he saw his OBP suffer as his walks didn’t spike up. His xBA was .280, so calculating his BB% and his xBA to figure out what his hypothetical OBP should’ve been, .338 which while it isn’t great, shows that he was slightly better than his traditional numbers show.

The reason I bring up OBP isn’t just because of his xBA, but because of his walk% being 9.2 last year and around the 7% mark since 2015, yet it dropping to 5.9% this year. I think you’ll see it go back to around 6.6%, and if he has 200 At-Bats in a short season with 58 hits, he should have around a .355 OBP next year to pair with a .460-.470 SLG meaning offensively he’s going to perform pretty damn well.

What Does the Future Hold For Cano?

With the DH in 2020 (hopefully) Cano in my opinion should DH and try to focus on offense as to be able to stay healthy and rake for the Mets. He won’t have too many years of success left in my opinion but I could be proven wrong, I won’t project farther than I have numbers to back it up by. It’d be wrong on my part to tell you when he’ll drop off, so take it year by year for Robbie

For his next season though? He’ll be solid offensively, and be able to bounceback as a top 10 2B in baseball next season.