Why Would We Want Cano Back????

So I have to say I had a little bit of a mini heart attack this week when my phone lit up that so and so, this follower and that follower etc. had retweeted a tweet put out by Andrew Marchand of ESPN.com. When I swiped and opened the tweet the tweet said, to paraphrase, that Ellsbury had a no-trade clause and would have to approve any deal to Seattle. Immediately I began scouring Twitter and the internet to see what I had missed only to notice that Marchand, like many writers (and no I don’t blame them for it if this is their profession), was putting some click baits out there to push his newest article covering how the New York Yankees and Seattle Mariners could pull off a Jacoby Ellsbury for Robinson Cano swap. The story was not only unoriginal and already done by myself and others a month ago but it got me thinking, why would the Yankees even want Cano back at this point?

We all know the back story at this point. Robinson Cano signed a 10-year deal worth a whopping $240 million with the Seattle Mariners back in 2013. At the time Cano, a Yankees farm hand and second baseman, was 31 years old and coming off another strong season in the middle of the Yankees lineup. Since the deal Cano has delivered the Mariners just 36 home runs in two seasons including a .300 average and .807 OPS. Cano has gone from being the “lazy” Yankees star that never legged out ground balls and never turned singles into doubles and doubles into triples to a perennial slow starter and a struggling player with a crippling contract. 

Ellsbury’s contract is no walk in the park with five seasons left but there is still some upside with it. Ellsbury showed, if healthy, he can at least be a weapon in the Yankees lineup. Is he overpaid? Sure he is, a defensive center fielder who is never going to hit you 32 home runs again like he did in Boston in 2011, but his contract is far from a disaster at this time. If he has another 2015 type season rather than a generally healthy 2014 season next year then we can talk but just two seasons in and with a deal that pays him until he is just 37 years old, not 41 years old like Cano’s deal, is far better bang for your buck in my opinion. 

Also, did you even head the Andy Van Slyke comments? Come on guys, there is some truth there. The only people that tell the truth and nothing but the truth are drunk people, children up to a certain age and people with nothing to lose. Van Slyke may have fit into two of these categories but still, there’s definitely some troubling truth there. 

I don’t care how much money Seattle kicks in or how much money is offset by another “bad” contract in Ellsbury. Unless Seattle is willing to kick in a few years or a the fountain of youth I simply don’t want to see another player well into his 40’s and long past his prime making an uber amount of money in a Yankees uniform. Those days began with Alex Rodriguez and they need to die with Alex Rodriguez. No more 10-year contracts to players past 30-years old, no more potentially franchise crippling contracts that will become a burden sooner rather than later and no more contracts, period, for historically “lazy” players. No more. Enough! Why would we want Cano back anyway? We wouldn’t, well we shouldn’t anyway.