Collette Calls: Breaking Down Robinson Cano

Any piece that looks at what the 2015 season was for Robinson Cano has to start with his off-field issues. Cano had two challenges to deal with in his personal life -- the death of his grandfather and severe acid reflux that began as a parasitic issue late in 2014. The former issue tugs at the heart while the latter easily zaps one's energy because he can't consume what he normally would to have enough energy to get through a baseball game and play 6-7 nights a week.

Baseball players are human like the rest of us and saying they should leave their personal issues off the field is a lot easier than actually doing it. I know that when I was going through a divorce in 2000, I couldn't leave it at the door when I walked into my office each day. My performance out of the office affected my performance in the office. It turns out chasing skirts and drinking late into the night is not the best way to prepare for the next day at the office. I lost that job due to poor performance and not having a $240 million guaranteed contract, but the point stands that nobody can completely separate their personal and professional lives.

The other prevailing theory with Cano's 2015 season is that Edgar Martinez saved it. Outside of the Seattle fan base, few love Martinez more than I do. He was the best right-handed hitter I saw in his time, and I think he belongs in the Hall of Fame because designated hitter is a position in the league he played in. After all, we're talking about a hitter with a career 147 OPS+ and a .312/.418/.515 slash line in more than 8,600 plate appearances.

Before diving into the Edgar effect statistically, it is worth reminding everyone that correlation does not imply causation. After all, what in the heck does the consumption rate of margarine in the United States have to do with the divorce rate in the state of Maine?

That said, the pre-Edgar and post-Edgar splits are rather dramatic.

This was his heat map (via BaseballSavant.com) prior to Martinez taking over as hitting coach:

This was the heatmap after Martinez became the hitting coach:

The overall spray chart does not look much different, but what is noticeably different on it is the distance the ball traveled, which is more noticeable when you look at the images in the below animation:

From a behavior standpoint, little changed with the coaching switch as Cano's approach at the plate shows negligible variance:

The improvements on pitches within the strike zone are more noticeable.

The mechanical changes at the plate were covered in depth in late June by Dan Farnsworth of Fangraphs. Farnsworth is a private hitting coach in Los Angeles who noticed some immediate changes in Cano's swing and provided several animations to outline what he described with his words. For me, the money paragraph comes in between the second and third animations:

The first is the way the hands take the bat to the ball. Notice how in the 2013 version, there is more of a loop to his hand path; the first move is down before they start moving forward. In the 2014 look, Cano's hands start pushing directly toward contact. This makes his swing much more level, which is not as conducive to hitting high line drives and deep fly balls.