Kazmir is one of those pitchers that the Sox hitters have never been able to figure out. Over 27.1 IP, he has a 1.32 ERA and .174 BAA vs. the Sox...

But, yeah, these are exciting times for the AL East. For the first time in a l-o-n-g time, we have three legitimate contenders for the division title!

Robinson Cano? The guy with the .324 OBP and 11 errors in 61 games? He's the guy who turned around the Yankees?

Uh, right. The reason the Yankees are in first is because A-Rod, Sheffield, Matsui, Giambi - and all the rest of those old overpaid has-beens who were gonna collapse any minute - have been mashing the ball. They don't need good starting pitching. I'm starting to think they don't need any starting pitching. Just run the relievers out there from the first inning.

Sturtze and Rivera shut down the Rangers completely for the final three innings of last night's game. That kind of relief work, along with the old about-to-collapse guys crushing the ball, have got the $%*&!#@ Yankees back in first. Robinson Cano had as much to do with it as I did.

Cano's callup was the moment the Yankees brass decided to turn things around. He's a better player than Womack and the move showed the Yankees were not willing to stand pat. It may be a small improvement in the offense compared to Tony, but they're certainly a better team with Cano at 2nd.

I would pin it on the bats catching fire, and Cano is definitely a part of that--while he may be not much more than league average, Womack was brutal at second. But he's not by himself out there: Giambi has been hot since the start of June and Matsui, ARod, Sheffield, and Jeter have been killing the ball most of the season.

Another thing about Cano: while I'm not a big subscriber to the whole "he brings energy to the ballclub, that's why they're playing well" theory of baseball, there's definitely a sense of urgency and energy to this club that wasn't there back in April and May. Maybe it's knowing they'll have to score 9 runs a night to win, or maybe it's having a young kid who's just happy to be there; either way, they're playing better.

A division that has 3 of the top 4 offenses in the majors by EQR seems pretty strong to me...the Sox, Birds and Yanks can all mash with the best of them.

The Yanks added with Cano more by subtracting Womack, who was so absolutely brutal that Baseball Prospectus actually wrote an article describing his [surprisingly good] chances of winning the anti-triple-crown (lowest BA/HR/RBI for qualified batter). Cano brings at least a neutral bat and superior defense...and that certain je ne c'est qua....is it youthful vigor? the reflection of the Yanks restlessness and willingness to mix things up for the win?...whatever it is, their winning ways coincide with his arrival. But yeah, Giambi's resurgence may have just a little something to do with it, too.

The Yanks should enjoy it while they can, though. Tough schedule, Wang's hurt, and while Leiter makes a great story, it's probably not too likely that he'll keep pitching like he did on Sunday.

RE: Robinson Cano? The guy with the .324 OBP and 11 errors in 61 games?

I think many of those errors occurred soon after his call up (although his throw in the 9th on Sunday is seared into my brain). And if you give the kid a pass for his first week in the bigs ("another weak grounder to second"), his line is:

.320 .345 .498

While more walks would certainly be great, esp. out of the 2 hole, he's not a hacking machine and is rarely overmatched at the plate (32 Ks).

Cano's been much more than just a marginal improvement over Womack, and I'd take those numbers from a rookie second baseman any day.

Well, if a low OBP, lots of errors, "youthful vigor" and French phrases have turned the Yankees around, maybe every team should try the combo.

Hey, John Henry, get your team to say "c'est la vie," swing at bad pitches, kick the ball around, and take Botox injections! You'll be back in first in no time!

Of course, it also helps to have four other guys with a .890+ OPS, the best closer in the game, and some good setup men.

Speaking of John Henry, the &^#$@!* Yankees are lucky that the Bosox also have troubles with run prevention. If the Red Sox were only league-average in keeping the other team from scoring, they might have the Yanks in real trouble.

By the way, Cano's current OBP is right in line with his .273/.325/.415 minor league record. He is hitting for more power, maybe because he's seeing better pitches ahead of the Sheffield-ARod-Matsui-Giambi murderer's row. But thoese four guys have had a lot more to do with the Yankees' turnaround tahn Cano.

Yeah, 2003 was really horrible for the laid back Red Sox wasn't it? Getting 5 outs from the World Series is just absolute suckiness isn't it?

And, of course, the laid back "idiot" attitude, which became even more pronounced in 2004 under the superstar coddling, metamucial chugging, comatose Francona proved really disastrous, didn't it?

Yeah, nothing beats uptight, water cooler destroying, every loss is a crisis attitude from players if you want to play deep into October.

Robinson Cano - MVP

As Dave pointed out, the Yankees play .600 baseball with him in the lineup. That's value. I asked witticist/centerfielder Doug Glanville about it.

"That guy probably has some cosmic sense about him that makes others around him better. Kinda like his holiness the Dalai Lama. While in the minors with other clubs, you work on bunting drills. While in the minors with the Yankees, you have mystique and aura classes. There's no substitution for that."

We here couldn't agree more. On the heels of my Shannon Stewart for 2003 MVP campaign, let me be the first to jump on the bandwagon -

Robinson Cano, your 2005 AL MVP

All of this Cano bashing is coming from a fan of a team whose starting second baseman was on pace to strike out nearly 200 times this season and whose slugging .100 points lower than Cano. It's convenient to argue against Cano's hitting while omitting his .465 SLG. When he reaches at-bat qualifications, which should be by the end of this week, he'll be 7th among all 2nd baseman in slugging, 11th in OPS, and 14th in OBP. Bellhorn is currently LAST in slugging among qualified 2nd basemen. And if you want to get really creative, Cano has 33.9 runs created in 63 games.

Of course, I'm not saying that it's great to have anyone in the lineup with a .324 OBP, but Alex Cora and his career .310 OBP have somehow inherited the job in Boston.

Take it easy, Killers -

Mr. Pinto merely noted the correlation between Cano's appearance and the blessed Yanks improvement. He did not suggest it was the cause.

Cano's SLG is better than his .415 minor league figure, but we'll see how long he can keep it up. I'm only saying that his callup was almost completely coincidental to the Yankees' turnaround.

Look, I hate how the Yankees do business. Like David I hope they collapse from old age and the wages of financial sin. But the unpleasant facts force me to admit the truth: the Yankees lead the world in runs scored largely becuase of a quartet of storebought old guys - Sheffield, Arod, Matsui, Giambi.

Those gentlemen are earning $58.6 million among them, if you believe ESPN. George can spend, spend, spend.

But they're also racking up the four top OPS figures on the team. They've had a lot more to do with the Yankees' success than the callup of a career .740 OPS second baseman.

In fact, without the Expensive Quartet, the Yankees would be dead, dead, dead because they would be below league-average in runs scored. Nobody else on the team, amazingly enough, has an OPS above .815. George has spent his way to the state-of-the-art offense that has the Yankees in contention. $#@*&^$ George and %&*^#@! Yankees.

By the way, I'll echo conventional wisdom: switch Mueller to second and play Youkilis at third. If Mueller doesn't want to play second, do a George and offer to renegotiate his contract.

You hate how the Yankees do business? And how no problems with the way the Sox run their money operations? Let's see: How about giving Schilling $2 million for winning the World Series? And the Sox are 2nd in the world in runs scored behind a tandem of 4 making $44.05 million. Red Sox fans crying poverty and bemoaning the big business of the Yankees border on ridiculous. The Sox are a better-run team with the 2nd highest payroll in the bigs. They take as much advantage of baseball's wacked-out financial set-up and lack of salary cap as the Yankees do.

But that's neither here nor there for David's original point. From the time of Cano's and Wang's call-ups the Yanks are playing better. Who knows if there's a motivational factor involved, the lack of Tony Womack wasting a spot, or just dumb luck, but either way, they've got the best record in the AL East since the start of May.

You seem to labor under the illusion that I'm a Red Sox fan. I can tolerate the Sox only when they're playing the Yankees...because I dislike George's guys even more than John Henry's. I hope Baltimore beats them both, I hope they both miss the playoffs.

But I get the feeling they won't because they spend too much.

As for the "motivational" effects of Cano or Wang, I'll place more faith in the numbers. With Cano and Wang but without the Expensive Quartet, the Yankees really would be collapsing because their run differential would be -30 at best. They would still have given up the 471 runs but they would have only scored the league-average of 440, if that.

The only reason the Yankees are contending is that the Four Big-Salary Guys are slamming the ball around the park. Cano is very, very incidental.

Casey: My bad. I thought you had mentioned you were a Sox fan. Out of curiosity, where do you get them scoring the league-average of 440 without that quartet? If the Yanks had four other players manning those positions, they wouldn't all have VORPs of 0.0. You're right, though. There's no denying that the Yankee pitching outside of Rivera has been awful.

Hey, no problem. The Red Sox have nice uniforms, anyway.

When you dig into the Yanks'offensive numbers, it really is amazing how much they depend on the Costly Foursome. ARod, Sheffield, Giambi and Matsui have put up a combined and very impressive .948 OPS. The rest of the team has managed a much less impressive .713. (These are weighted averages based on plate appearances for each player.)

The AL average is .756 (again, a weighted average based on each team's plate appearances). If you replaced the Expensive Quartet with league-average players at their positions, I think the the Yanks would be lucky to get up to league-average in OPS. Which, of course, correlates closely to runs scored.

In fact, if any of the foursome goes down with an injury or suffers an extended slump, I think the Yanks are cooked because they need every run they can get. Which is a nice thought.

What I don't understand is how someone can criticize a team by saying they are nothing without their four best hitters. I think that if you took the most talented half of ANY team's lineup out, they certainly would struggle too.

Not to say that the Yankee's aren't flawed, but you can't really criticize them by saying that they would struggle if they didn't have talent.

Hey, I can criticize the Yankees for anything. Heavy rain, traffic jams, dandruff... I may have mentioned that I don't like the Yankees.

Halfway seriously, there's a long and sharp falloff from the Yanks' top four to anybody else on the team. Jeter is next in line, with an OPS more than eighty points below Matsui's.

Sure, any team would score fewer runs without their four top OPS guys (or, more accurately, with league-average guys instead of their top four). But the effect would be worse for the Yanks because the top four is SO much better than the rest of the team, and because the Yanks give up so many runs.

Another example...last year the Cardinals had an unbelievable OPS quartet in Pujols, Edmonds, Walker and Rolen. This year the quartet is producing lower but still respectable numbers. But the Cards are still cruising because they have terrific pitching (best in the NL in staff ERA, by a long ways).

Which is something the Yankees don't have. As last night showed, they need runs and lots of them to contend. So they better keep that quartet healthy and producing, or the collapse could be sudden and nasty.

For someone that doesn't like the Yankees you seem to spend an awful lot of time researching and talking about them.

A fair point, Mike. Take away the Red Birds' top 4 hitters and they're the D-Rays, maybe less.

The same would be true of almost any team.

I spend too much time researching and talking about a lot of teams and players. In this thread alone I've done research on the Red Sox, Cardinals, and overall NL and AL.

Bottom line is that the Yankees won't stand or fall on Robinson Cano. Barring major acquisitions of quality pitching, the Yanks will live or die with the Four High-Priced Guys. If they keep combining for a .950 OPS or better, the Yanks can contend. If they start to slide, the Yankees are in very serious trouble. The team doesn't have the failsafe of great pitching or other really good offensive players.

Truth to tell, sharp observers saw this before the season, instead of the conventional wisdom about age or salaries. The Yankees looked unbalanced, too dependent on a small group of really good players. They still look that way.

Can they win? Sure. The Red Sox don't have great pitching, either, and the Orioles aren't that far above water on run diff. (Toronto is the real dark horse. A smidgen of luck and that team could surprise everybody. They've allowed the fewest runs in the division.)

But the Yankees have to keep those four guys healthy.

Matsui is in the Yankees "Big 4", but he really doesn't make all that much money compared to the other 3 guys. Sure, his 2005 salary of $8M is a lot, but not NEARLY as much as many other, lesser deserving, players in the league.

You're right about Matsui's salary, though eight million ain't chickenfeed except in George's world. Maybe Hideki should sue for anti-Japanese discrimination.

JUST KIDDING.

Cano is a rookie. Soriano couldn't take a walk either and he's panned out decently. The guy is gonna be a Major Leaguer for a long time barring injury.