Cano’s Hall chances take a huge blow
Suspended star will need voters to have an attitude change.
When the Seattle Mariners’ Robinson Cano received an 80-game drug suspension recently, it felt as if a plaque had been removed from the Hall of Fame before it even got there. Cano has been one of the most productive second basemen in major league history, and he leads the majors in games, hits and doubles since 2009.
Yet his chances for Cooperstown now look grim. While Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have increased their vote totals in each of the past four writer elections — both have moved above 50 percent — their ties to performance-enhancing drugs came in the era before testing, meaning they never served a suspension for drugs. Superstars caught after penalties began, in 2004, have been treated differently.
Rafael Palmeiro (3,020 hits, 569 home runs) fell off the ballot in 2014 when his support dipped below 5 percent. Manny Ramirez (2,574 hits, 555 homers) made his debut with 23.8 percent in January 2017, and fell to 22 percent this year. Candidates need 75 percent of the votes for election.
This spring, at the Mariners’ complex in Peoria, Arizona, Cano spoke about his chances for the Hall of Fame. He has 2,417 hits, 305 homers and a .304 average in his 14-year career.
“I’m focused more on having six more years left on the contract, and in those six years, I still want to be able to play second base,” he said. “I focus more on year by year. I mean, maybe in the next four years I might be sitting down and saying, ‘You know what, maybe I have a chance now.’ But I’m still at, what, 2,200 or 2,300 hits? You’ve still got to keep adding numbers. Gary Sheffield has 500 home runs, and he’s not even in. So I don’t know what it takes to make it to the Hall of Fame.”
It would seem to make sense for teams to have the option of voiding the remainder of a player’s contract after he violates the drug agreement. But while Cano will not be paid during his suspension, the rest of his 10-year, $240 million contract is guaranteed. He will have plenty of time to keep compiling numbers, but there’s another benefit to the length of his contract.
It runs through 2023, the year he turns 41. If he retires at the end of it, he would not appear on the ballot until December 2028.
33-year-old rookie
There are two missing lines on the unusual baseball itinerary of Brandon Mann, a left-handed reliever who finally reached the majors with the Texas Rangers, nearly 16 years after Tampa Bay had drafted him in the 27th round out of a high school near Seattle.
One missing line is from 2007, when Mann quit after five unfulfilling seasons in the low minor leagues. He worked the register at a Whole Foods back home and enrolled in community college but soon regretted the hasty decision. The Rays signed him back the next spring.
The other missing line is from 2013, after stints with farm teams of the Rays and the Dodgers, with an independent team in Maryland and two seasons shuttling between the majors and in the minors in Japan. Mann swears he did play in 2013, after the Nationals released him in spring training.
After a brief trial with a Pirates affiliate in 2014, Mann bounced to two more independent teams, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Fargo, North Dakota. He signed with Oakland, served an 80-game suspension after testing positive for the performance-enhancing drug Ostarine, and then pitched 59 games across two seasons in the Athletics’ farm system.
Mann worked out at the Driveline baseball complex near his home, as he had for two years, hoping for one more chance. The Rangers, intrigued by an online video of Mann pitching at Driveline, sent scouts to see him.
“Being in Double-A at 33, it’s hard for a team to take a chance on you,” Mann said. “The Rangers took a big chance on me, and I knew this was probably my last opportunity with an organization if I didn’t do something.”
At last, he did enough to get a call to the majors, after posting a 1.04 ERA in 12 games for Triple-A Round Rock. Mann hugged his manager, Jason Wood, and his pitching coach, Brian Shouse, and was off to Houston, where he worked 1⅔ scoreless innings in his debut.
In doing so, at age 33 years 362 days, Mann became the oldest American-born pitcher to make his major league debut since Joe Strong, who was 37 when he first pitched for the Marlins in 2000.