http://www.geocities.com/godlydesires/post_asb.htm

I am interested in how Cano was playing before Sierra went on the DL vs. after. My gut tells me that it has negatively affected his performance, but I want some statistical proof.

Thanks

And what about Cantu? This guy isn't just the Bizarro Jeter, he's practically like the Frankenstein monster of Jeter. He's tall and strong but he doesn't have an attractive face. His trademark is how low he pulls down his helmet. But man, he's got 90+ RBIs. Guy can flat hit.

I was at Friday night's game. The Royals are a joke, barely worthy of major league status. The weird thing about that Friday game: it was played in 2:24, but because there were so many lazy popups and high fly balls, it felt as if the whole game were played in slow motion.

A good place to go is the Yahoo player profiles. Go to the "Game Log" ( http://sports.yahoo.com/mlbpa/players/7497/gamelog ), which has stats after each game. Cano was at .305/.327/.470 on 7/19, the day Sierra went on the DL. He continued to be hot for a bit more than a week -- his high water mark was 7/28 at .313/.334/.489 -- and then began the long slide to today -- .271/.298/.404. Correlation is not causation, so given that that he's about where could be expected to be based on minor league performance (BP projected .254/.297/.389), I'd argue regression toward the mean rather than the loss of Sierra as the key fact.

jdrennan, what made you suspect this? were they close friends?

Here's the link to the stats after Sierra was placed on the DL.

Sierra had taken him under his wing...interesting point.

Here's what I don't understand: why can't Sierra travel with the club and keep mentoring the kid if that's so important? Is his leg such a problem that he can't travel? Or is he just working on his salsa records during his recovery?

Yeesh.

I tend to agree with Dan M's assertion that it's more an affect of advanced scouting than the proximity of Sierra to Cano on the bench, but I did want to track the month of sept. to see if Sierra's return had a positive influence on Cano's final month and the playoffs.

History tells me that the very evenly matched Yanks and Sox will split the remaining 6 games. Let's hope the so-far-overmatched Yanks pick it up against the DRays and win 5 of the 6 games.

The DRays have a chance to play the ultimate spoilers this year, and I'm sure Lou will love every minute of it.

As I said at the time, that kind of mentoring is very cool, IMHO. I don't know if it means Sierra was helping him with hitting as well - but I doubt Cano's recent slide is due to Sierra's missing presence. Rather, I just think pitchers have figured Cano out, and now he has to adjust.

Also Bernie Williams drove in the other three runs batting sixth. With Matsui still in the two-hole (and playing center with Lawton in left batting seventh), the top six batters in the Yankee line-up went 13 for 25 with three walks, scoring and driving in all ten runs.

For his part, Lawton has been on-base three times in eight trips (thanks to a pair of walks and that single that kept Saturday's rally going): .375 OBP. Unfortunately, he appears to have a horrible throwing arm.