Mets cut ties with Robinson Cano

The New York Mets reported Monday that they cut ties with the veteran Dominican second baseman Robinson Canowho has about $40 million to collect on the 10-year, $240 million contract he signed with the Seattle Mariners before the 2014 season.

Canó, 39, was batting .195 (8-for-41) with a home run and three RBIs in 12 games on his return to the major leagues after serving a second suspension for violating baseball’s anti-doping policy.

Upon assignment, Cano will have to wait a week to become a free agent and sign with any other team, which would only have to pay him a proportion of the minimum salary ($700,000 in 2022), while New York would be responsible for most of his $24 million guaranteed salary for this and next seasons.

When they traded Cano to the Mets in December 2018, the Mariners agreed to pay $3.75 million a year of Cano’s salary.

Canó is batting .302 with 2,632 hits, including 335 home runs, and 1,305 RBIs in 17 years in the Major Leagues, but the future of the player was a topic of conversation in recent days in Queens, as the date of May 2 approached, when the Mets and all other major league clubs were required to reduce their payrolls from 28 to 26 members.

Major League rosters are normally made up of 26 players, but because of the shortness of spring training, the commissioner’s office allowed the addition of two extra pieces, mostly relief pitchers, between April 7 and May 1. .

“This is a position nobody wants to be in,” Cano said Sunday night. “You are never prepared for things, but when they come, you adapt. Let it be what God wants that has to happen in life,” he added.

An eight-time All-Star and multiple Gold Glove winner, Cano had a career that seemed headed for the Cooperstown Hall of Fame until he was suspended twice for doping. The first ban, for 80 games, occurred in May 2018, while the second, for 162 games in 2021, was announced in November 2020.

The player reported to the Mets’ practices in Port St. Lucie, Fla., with no guaranteed role in new manager Buck Showalter’s overall plan.

“I haven’t thought about a role, but I feel good about competing,” Cano said, after apologizing to his teammates and Mets fans.

“It’s all going to depend on how he feels physically, how he develops. I can’t say right now if he’s going to play as many games at second base, have as many DH shifts or any other role. We’re just getting ready for the season,” Showalter said. . “Jeff McNeill he’s the favorite to play second base,” the pilot added at the time.