In today’s New York Daily News, Yankee hitting coach throws Robinson Cano under the bus for a lack of hustle — specifically not running hard enough to first on ground balls. Here are some of the choice comments from Long:
“If somebody told me I was a dog,” Long said here Sunday, “I’d have to fix that. When you choose not to, you leave yourself open to taking heat, and that’s your fault. For whatever reason, Robbie chose not to.”
Long also said about Cano:
“He overcame so much while he was here,’’ Long said. “As a young kid there were holes everywhere. There were holes in his swing, in his makeup, in his body composition. This kid grew and grew and grew. All the other stuff … he’d take plays off in the field, he’d give away at-bats in RBI situations. He made a lot of personal decisions to get over the hump in those areas. People don’t know how hard he worked, how many times he was the one asking me to do extra work in the cage.’’
Sure, Long was complimentary at times about Cano when talking to John Harper, but there were an awful lot of negative comments in there about the Yankees’ best player last year. And Long never acknowledges a pretty good reason for Cano not to play 100% at all times — that he has been able to stay healthy throughout his career and play nearly every single game. Cano only missed 14 games since 2006 — that should have been mentioned in the article.
Anyhow, I had to wonder why Kevin Long was talking about Cano to such an extent anyway. What was the purpose? If Long thought this was so important for Cano to hustle, and he didn’t do it, that reflects as badly on the hitting coach as it does on the second baseman. It also seems like bad form to me for him to trash Cano after he went elsewhere. If he had stayed on the Yankees, would Long be publicly flapping his gums on the flaws in Cano’s game?
Maybe Long ought to pay more attention to his day job instead of being the Yankees’ henchman.
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