The Pile is Too Big

Robinson Canó should get as little playing time as the Mets can possibly give him.

Here’s the thing about the expression “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” In the real world, it’s only applicable in one unrealistically specific situation: you’re placing straw on a camel’s back, one piece at a time, monitoring the camel’s back so you can tell exactly which piece of straw broke it. That’s not what usually happens, as far as putting straw on a camel’s back is concerned. Usually, you just take a big heap of straw and dump it on a camel’s back, and if the camel’s back breaks, you know that the big heap of straw was too much. One of the straws was the one that broke the camel’s back — but as long as the pile is too big, who cares which straw it was?

Of course, I’ll bet no recent Met, besides maybe Yoenis Céspedes, has ever literally dumped straw on a camel’s back. The phrase is far more useful as a metaphor. And lately, no one has been dumping more metaphorical straw on the camel’s back than Robinson Canó.

Is there anybody more emblematic than Canó of the Mets failure ethos that Steve Cohen is now working to cast off? First, Brodie Van Wagenen, who himself was an utter failure of hiring process, traded Jarred Kelenic and Justin Dunn for him, immediately after a season in which Canó served an 80-game suspension for Furosemide, a diuretic banned by MLB’s performance-enhancing drug policy. Then he came to the Mets, and in 2019 put up his lowest OPS (.736) since 2008. Then he rebounded in 2020, batting .316/.352/.544 line with 10 home runs in 49 games — and almost immediately after the season ended, he was suspended for 162 games for a second positive PED test, this time for the anabolic steroid Stanazolol.

So he missed the 2021 season. Now he’s playing in the Dominican Winter League, preparing for a return in 2022. Michael Mayer of Metsmerized Online reported Saturday morning that Canó has played 30 winter league games, including both the regular season and the postseason, and is batting .264 with one home run in 134 plate appearances. His OBP is .306.

That doesn’t usually happen, by the way. In 2020, fresh off his Stanazolol suspension, Canó played eight Winter League games and batted .353 with three home runs in 34 at-bats. I wonder what has changed?

AP Photo

Canó is already 39. By the time the 2022 season starts, assuming it starts on time (I know, I know, but just assume it), it will have been 18 months since he took an MLB at-bat. He’s a twice-suspended PED cheat and an eternal symbol of humiliating Mets failure, and now it looks like he can’t even be a productive hitter in the Dominican Winter League.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how J.D. Davis has earned a job as the Mets Designated Hitter in 2022, assuming the National League implements the DH. Almost all the pushback I received was about Canó. How else can we get Canó’s bat in the lineup? We can’t let the $24-million eight-time all-star sit on the bench! He proved in 2020 that he can still hit!

How to get Canó at-bats? Here’s one way: make him wait on the bench for at-bats that are utterly inconsequential. Canó can pinch-hit in the eighth with the Mets down by 10. He can be the guy you throw in at second base when Jeff McNeil fouls a ball off his shin and needs a break. Use him in blowouts, or when there’s absolutely nobody else available. Use him as little as possible while still keeping him just sharp enough that if he somehow becomes necessary, he’ll have taken at least a few at-bats after an 18-month absence.

If he proves that he’s still a productive MLB hitter, then sure, work him in more often. But even if that happens — and I’d call the possibility remote — does anyone really want to see more of Robinson Canó than is absolutely necessary? Morally, he’s a twice-caught PED cheat. Talent-wise, his Winter League numbers don’t say anything encouraging, and given the PEDs, who knows how good he’s really ever been? Temporally, he’s 39 years old and won’t have played MLB baseball in 18 months. Career-wise, he’s a player who had his best years for the Yankees, for goodness’ sake, and is now coasting into the sunset on the Mets’ dime. Symbolically, he represents the last gasp of the Wilpon-era Mets, a big-name process failure who has utterly fallen apart.

There are so many reasons Canó should play for the Mets as little as possible. The camel’s back is broken, and the pile is so big that it doesn’t even matter which straw it was.