Last year, in the first year of his 10-year, $240 million contract, Robinson Cano had a terrific season. His 14 home runs tied a career low, but he scored and drove in enough runs to anchor a Seattle squad that missed a Wild Card spot by one game.
Coming into 2015, things were supposed to only get better. He was ostensibly more comfortable hitting in Safeco Field, and he had increased protection with the free-agent signing of Nelson Cruz, who was the only player in MLB to hit 40 home runs in 2014.
Unfortunately for the Mariners and Cano, things have not gone according to plan.
Through June 9, Cano is hitting .242 with only two home runs and 19 RBI. His wRC+, which measures how many runs a player creates, sits at a paltry 73, per FanGraphs. The average is 100, so that shows what kind of season Cano is having to this point.
However, Cano's long track record of success makes it hard to believe that he will stay in this slump forever. The Mariners organization certainly thinks the star second baseman will eventually snap out of it.
"When it's all said and done, his numbers are probably going to be right where they're supposed to be," Mariners manager Lloyd McClendon told the Associated Press (via ESPN.com). "He was born to hit."
A look at some advanced data suggests that McClendon might be correct. Cano is hitting the ball to the opposite field a little less than he usually does, but other than that, all his other numbers look similar to what he has done throughout his career.
His 34.6 hard-hit percentage, according to FanGraphs, is about two points higher than his career average and six points higher than last year.
Cano ranks 45th in the league in exit velocity, per Baseball Savant, with the ball coming off his bat at an average velocity of 91 miles per hour. While his spot on the leaderboard might not seem that impressive, Nolan Arenado, Nelson Cruz, Hanley Ramirez and Andrew McCutchen—guys having better seasons than Cano—all rank lower than the Mariners' 32-year-old second baseman.
He is hitting the ball on the ground over half the time, which is more often than he did with the Yankees, but he currently sports almost exactly the same ground ball, line drive and flyball percentages as he did last year, per FanGraphs.
However, he is not making as much contact as he has in the past. With Cruz hitting behind him, Cano has seen more first-pitch strikes and more strikes in general, but he is not making pitchers pay when they challenge him.
According to FanGraphs, he has made less contact when he has swung at pitches in and out of the strike zone, and he has also possesses a career-high 8.8 swinging-strike percentage.
One of his biggest problems has been against off-speed pitches, for which he has had "an exceptionally poor eye," per Brooks Baseball. Alarmingly, he has swung at over half of the off-speed pitches that he has seen out of the zone.
With all that said, none of those numbers fully explain why Cano's statistics are so awful. While he is swinging and missing a little more often, he is still hitting the ball with authority.
If anyone can overcome a slump, it is Cano, who Mariners hitting coach Howard Johnson said is "the best I've ever seen as a pure hitter," per John Harper of New York Daily.
I don't know. I feel good. I'm seeing the ball. I would say I'm missing my pitches—pitches right down the middle that I'm hitting for foul balls. There are no excuses for that. I'm just struggling. Everybody goes through these things and I'm trying to stay positive. But it's not clicking right now. There's no excuses for that.
So according to the man himself, it's not that he is uncomfortable at the plate or anything like that; he is just a bit off. It happens to the best players in all sports, but especially baseball, where most of the best hitters in the league still make outs about 70 percent of the time.
Ultimately, I think a hot streak is inevitable. And considering how bad Cano has been to this point, he could get really, really hot.
He smashed two doubles on Tuesday off of Corey Kluber in the Mariners' 3-2 victory, so maybe he is already starting to break out of it.
I'm not sure that he can finish with stats up to par with what he usually does, but Robinson Cano is too good of a hitter to have such a low batting average and home run total, especially when he is hitting the ball hard.
Watch out, Major League Baseball: Pretty soon he is going to be crushing pitches like few other can.
