Truly horrible 60-game season.

The Yankees may even choose to replace him. His descent seems to be irreversible.

Having said that, there is no reason to DFA him or trade him. He has no trade value whatsoever.

Sorry, Yankee fans, but that's how that works.

At some point, all things culminate.

I tend to agree that the Yankees would outbid the Mets, if necessary.

My gripe with most of the coverage is that it's nothing more than the wishful thinking of Met fans and the overwrought reactions of Yankee fans.

Just play him as shortstop and his defense will probably improve.

"But" seems to be the wrong conjunction.

"After his best offensive season in years, a second drug suspension confirmed what Robinson Cano didn’t want us to know.

Barring a plot twist only JJ Abrams could conceive, the second-base icon’s brilliant season, and, on a pure X’s and O’s-basis, Hall of Fame-worthy career is likely to be overshadowed by the fallout from his positive Stanozolol test.

...

Cano’s suspension without pay will last the entire 2021 season, and with that, the Mets are down a productive hitter. Exactly why he was the most productive 37-year-old in the game? Well, that’s between him, his doctor, and, potentially, his other doctors. (Or 'doctors.' As of writing, Cano had yet to issue a statement about his positive test.)"

I don't think it's going out on a limb to connect the dots regarding Cano's surprisingly productive season.

But, Cano hit .316/.352/.544 in 2020, and his .896 OPS was third best on the team, mashing in a lineup that had the third best OPS in baseball. He can still stroke the ball with authority, as his exit velocity remains in the top quarter of all big league hitters, so there’s no reason to think Cano is fluking his way into good stats.

There's no reason to think Cano is fluking his way into good stats?

Other than the positive Stanozozol test that led to a year-long suspension? 

"Beyond the numbers game, Cano has been respected as a high-character leader for nearly a decade, both with the Mariners and Mets."

This is starting to sound like a fake article.

"Without an A-Rod like third act, the Cano era might be over in Queens, if not in a contractual sense — he’s signed through 2023 — almost certainly a spiritual one. Wednesday may have been a dispiriting day for Cano and the teammates and rivals who loved him, but his inglorious departure is an open door the Mets are uniquely prepared to seize."

Maybe some teammates are sad to seem him go, but it's obviously good news for the Mets.

They're off the hook for a bad contract for a player who had a PED-fueled pretty good return to form in a sub-200 at-bat season.

Sure, baseball teams kinda want to make the playoffs ...

 ... inasmuch as playoff baseball generally creates a quick infusion of cash:

"The era of opportunity cost in baseball, the chapter we’ve lived in for the past quarter-century, is dead. Several years ago I made the case that it was time to stop considering player salaries when conducting transaction analysis, both because of its devaluation of labor and because of the difficulty of understanding what, exactly, the lost opportunity of an albatross contract presents when we lack access to trustworthy financial information. Now, I repeat this request, because the consideration of baseball players as commodities is no longer simply distasteful, it is also meaningless. Teams no longer operate under the constraints we’ve long assumed.

Thirty teams had the opportunity to employ relief pitcher Brad Hand for a single year at a price of $10 million. Thirty teams could pencil in a league-average, in-their-prime second baseman in Kolten Wong for $12.5 million. None did so. The idea of large and small markets, that some teams can afford the best players and others can’t, the philosophy that underpinned the seminal cliche of modern baseball, Moneyball, is now a myth. Your favorite team could improve its chances of winning. It won’t, because it doesn’t believe it’s worth it. Franchises are no longer forced to rely on winning to create profit. The era of baseball as pure competition is over."

Fleetwood Mac has released two albums in 25 years, and you can't name one song from either of them.

Because Fleetwood Mac doesn't sell music. 

They sell the idea of Fleetwood Mac.

 

MLB fans have been duped for a long time, not only with regards to the "value" of players, but the entire relentless fan-as-GM nonsense: "Move DJ to first base and trade Voit for some starting pitchers."

What a genius idea that everybody else thought of.

If Joe from Metuchen were the Yankees' GM, they undoubtedly would have won 12 Championships over the past 20 years.

It may be disheartening to realize that your fandom is taken for granted, but it is.

 

 

Robinson Cano.

"I was walking with Robert Kraft across a parking lot in Foxboro one morning a long time ago, watching him interact with Patriots fans, when he stopped and said, 'No owner owns the fans. We’re all caretakers of a public trust.' Kraft was the first I ever heard use the expression. He was right, of course. That’s what Cohen sounded like the other day, when he didn’t just sound like the richest Mets fan on the planet, one who instantly made Mets fans think as if they’ve already scored the biggest free agent in baseball."

I was spritzing with Buck Showalter and Tony Larussa in a Lake Tahoe sauna talking about Mookie Wilson, Bob Gibson, and the time Dave Roberts stole second base against the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS ...

  

"But then along came Derek Jeter on Friday, the most famous Yankee since Mickey Mantle, to remind you all over again that everybody better pay attention to him down in South Florida now that he is running the Marlins. Steve Cohen, new Mets owner, said a lot of good things. Capt. Jeter, who runs the show with the Marlins, did something great when he hired Kim Ng to be his general manager."

That's ... cool? I guess?

Did Jeter just beat Cohen in the competition for coolest MLB owner?

"And if you think that somehow Jeter only chose Kim Ng because she is a woman, as if he wanted to make a statement instead of an incredibly intelligent hire, than you have missed the arc of Ng’s career. 

Of course I missed the arc of Kim Ng's career.

Why would I follow the arc of the careers of MLB executives?

Your Sunday columns are boring enough.

 

"She has been preparing herself to get this kind of opportunity for over 20 years, with the Yankees and the Dodgers and working for Major League Baseball in the essential area of baseball operations. If she were a man, people would look at the road she took to this moment and say, 'Okay, it was her time,' and think nothing more of it."

Ummm ... I'm already thinking nothing more of it.

 

"I think the Yankees would be nuts to lose DJ LeMahieu, who has been their best player for two years.

And I frankly think the Mets would be nuts not to go after him hard.

I am going to keep asking this question about LeMahieu:

When was the last time the Yankees let their best player just walk away?"

The last time?

Robinson Cano.

Lots of things might happen.

"DJ LeMahieu is one of the best free-agent signings the Yankees have ever made. Now they might lose him to free agency."

Are you going to present any new information in this article?

 

"It is as good a place as any to start talking about what LeMahieu has been to the Yankees, and what they might lose if they decide they can’t afford to keep him, even though he has been their best player since they got him for $24 million and two years after he left the Rockies."

It's as good a place to start as any to start talking about something that everybody already knows. 

But you do you, Lupica.

 

"Once it would have been unthinkable that the Yankees would allow somebody who is now a finalist for the American League Most Valuable Player Award to walk away. It might happen."

"Might."

 

Also, what about Robinson Cano? 

There might be others ... they traded Rickey, who would win an MVP shortly thereafter ... they traded Winfield in 1990, when he was 4th in MVP voting in 1988.

Reggie Jackson.

They lost Reggie to free agency a mere two seasons after his near-MVP 1980 season. Yes or no?

Cano was fifth in MVP voting in 2013 and signed with Seattle in the off-season.

That's four times I can think of off the top of my head. The parallels aren't precisely the same, they never are. But, in each case, they let MVP-quality players walk away.

Which is a lot for something that is unthinkable and never happened.

 

"LeMahieu is every bit the MVP candidate that fellow AL finalists José Abreu and José Ramirez are. Whether he wins the award or not – and I honestly believe he should -- you have to know that a Yankees team that many felt was good enough to win the World Series wouldn’t have even made the postseason without him."

Ha ha.

There is no reason to exaggerate.

I'm just being honest here. The Yankees only needed, what, 28 wins to make the playoffs?

Eight AL teams made the playoffs. The Yankees had a very disappointing season with only 33 wins. I have trouble believing they would have missed the playoffs entirely if it weren't for DJ LeMahieu.

 

"LeMahieu doesn’t make a lot of noise. He just came to New York and quietly became the best Yankee. The Yankees never lose a player like this. Now they might. It is, in the words of 'The Princess Bride,' inconceivable."

OK, so here's the problem: There is zero information in this entire article.

Everyone loves LeMahieu and everyone knows his value.

Sure, he was a surprise and a bargain, but he's no longer a surprise and, despite his laconic personality, he won't settle for being a bargain much longer.

So it's like every other decision.

The Yankees "might" sign him. 

Maybe the Yankees offer 5/$120 and LeMahieu gobbles it up before Christmas.

But what if the Philliles offer 8/$300? 

Then the Yankees "might" not sign him, and the inconceivable is suddenly quite conceivable.

 

 

Now he doesn't even wait until Spring Training.

"The team to watch in New York."

Maybe the Mets will also get the "backpage" for the four people who still read newspapers"

"If there's one team to watch more than any other in baseball this offseason, it's the Mets.

That's right, the Mets are trying to make themselves the team to watch in New York once again. It has happened before, the two times the Mets won the World Series -- first in 1969, when they were the Miracle Mets, and then in '86, when the Mets of Doc and Darryl and Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter felt like the greatest show on earth."

I mean ... 

For what it's worth, I heard the same thing about Dellin Betances.

 

"At this time of year -- and at any time of the year -- the Yankees have long been the team to watch. They don’t always make the biggest moves or sign the biggest free agents the way they did last winter with Gerrit Cole, or two years ago when they traded for Giancarlo Stanton, fresh off his NL MVP Award-winning season."

That's funny, because in Mike Lupica's World, the Yankees are never the team to watch. Only the Mets.

 

Good call by Giancarlo.