More than Curtis Granderson, more than Nick Johnson, the onus falls on Cano to fill the clutch gap. Indeed, it’s time for Cano to prove he’s more than a great talent, a status he reaffirmed in 2009 with a big rebound season.
In 2010 the Yankees need for him to prove he can be a great hitter as well, one who understands situations and delivers when it counts most.
Setting aside the inanity of linking hitting to defensive awards -- which, sadly, the players who vote on the things do -- I hate it when people act like clutch hitting is something someone can turn on and turn off at will via some assertion of character or intensity or testicular fortitude or whatever.
While clutch hits certainly exist, just about every study on the subject has established that there is no demonstrable, predictable or repeatable ability on the part of certain players to be good clutch hitters or not. Good hitters tend to hit well in clutch situations because they hit well in all situations. Bad hitters the opposite. Cano’s a generally good hitter, but because Cano tends to chase bad pitches -- and because hitters tend to see fewer good pitches when runners are on and the game is tight -- his failures, such as they are, are not necessarily surprising.
As Yankees hitting coach Kevin Long notes in the article, the point is to get Cano to quit chasing bad pitches, not grow some new clutch-hitting node on his cerebrum or whatever. But maybe even that’s more than he needs to do. Joe Girardi thinks its just a matter of dumb luck:
Practicing better patience and realizing better luck sounds like an easier trick to pull off than taking peyote, entering a Ute Indian sweat lodge and trying to commune with the Clutch Gods or whatever process Harper thinks it is that turns mere ballplayers into clutch hitters.
