Reese Kaplan -- The Mets Swallowed Hard & Did the Right Thing

OK, the dust has settled on the somewhat surprising Robinson Cano decision and it's time to analyze the good, the bad and the ugly of it all.  

First, let's look at the good.  Despite his long track record of tainted success and his enormous paycheck, Robinson Cano simply was not getting the job done.  Do you all remember how he performed in his first year in New York after arriving from Seattle?  Then came his PEDs of choice and he was terrific in the shortened 2020 season, followed by his ban from the league in 2021 when he was caught for the second time.  This year could be old age, lack of PEDs or a combination of the two.  It could also simply be a cold weather slump.

What Billy Eppler and company had to analyze was where Cano fit in for the current baseball season and the one that follows.  It would appear if you're building a team for the future, you don't do so with players aged 39 and 40 who are not performing at a well above average level.  Furthermore, with the revitalized Jeff McNeil around, you had to find a place to play him.  The outfield is fully stocked with Mark Canha, Brandon Nimmo and Starling Marte.  Eduardo Escobar has taken third base.  That left second base as the obvious choice.

Now older players moving from a regular full time role on both offense and defense into designated hitter is nothing new, but there's a caveat there.  You can turn a still productive hitter into a DH if his age or defense suggest he's no longer fit to play the field regularly if and only if he's swinging the bat as he once did.  

In Cano's case, it wasn't the missing home run power that alarmed folks so much as it did the inability to pull the ball and lack of line drives when he swung.  There's nothing wrong with a little slowing down so long as you demonstrate you can still get the job done.  Cano had not.

The bad side of this transaction is that some other team can pick him up once the DFA period expires and he's released for good.  That means the Mets pay him his remaining 2022 and 2023 salaries while an adventurous team could offer up major league minimum and bring into the fold someone who prior to his performance enhancing drug abuse was on the road to Cooperstown.  

It's possible that either he warms up as the weather warms up or he takes a non-authorized boost to help him use those muscles a bit more effectively.  Either one would leave Mr. Met with major egg on his face. 

The ugly would be J.D. Davis, Dom Smith and Travis Jankowski demonstrating why none had ever been major league regulars for an extended period of time.  Davis still appears lost at the plate, Smith (despite his recent 4-hit game) needs to show more good than bad, and Jankowski is the very definition of a AAAA player.  He's a career .241 hitter so you have to take his .300+ 2022 season with a grain of salt despite his strong defense and baserunning.  

All of the media is going gaga over the Mets' uncharacteristic exercise in accountability.  After all this team kept many players (and managers) way past their expiration date for no known reason other than they were obligated to pay them so they might as well get something back for that expense.  

The media is, however, a highly fickle and volatile beast that will just as quickly go 180 degrees in a reverse, "I told you we should have kept him!" rant should Cano hook on somewhere else and play at a decent level.  

Then again, we all wondered what would happen when we let Yoenis Cespedes walk away and the answer was a big fat nothing.  The front office would look their best if there's a similar fate in store for Cano.  While Francisco Lindor, J.D. Davis and other expressed empathy for the Cano termination, the fact is that a player caught once for cheating deserves a second chance.  A player caught twice deserves what he gets.  

Throw in the lack of productivity on top of it and the Mets were right to view Cano's contract as a sunk cost even if there's the potential it could come back to bite them.  They're not in the business of worrying about other teams.  Their job is to make the Mets better and the departure of the 2022 version of Robinson Cano is consistent with that goal.