Kuzul

We all know the situation by now.

The Yankees really want to keep Robinson Cano around for a long time.

The second basemen is one year away from hitting free agency and is likely in line for a major payday.

The Yankees are also historically known as a team that doesn’t negotiate with players before or during a season.

However, for Cano, it looks like the Bombers are willing to make a major exception for their star slugger.

Wallace Matthews of ESPN New York reported that the Yankees and Cano’s agent, Scott Boras, have had discussions about a possible extension.

“We expressed to Scott how much we liked Robbie and what a great Yankee he’s been, and we hope he continues his career here for a long time to come,” (Hal) Steinbrenner said. “We just indicated to him, on a very preliminary basis, that we were willing to consider a significant long-term contract, and left it at that. There’s nothing really to report since then.”

In 2013, Cano is playing out the final year of his contract worth $15 million, but there has been a lot of talk that the Yankees second baseman could get a deal similar to Albert Pujols’ 10-year, $240 million deal or Joey Votto‘s 10-year, $225 million deal.

Matthews also mentioned Cano could get a similar deal to the one Felix Hernandez got with the Mariners, which was for seven years and $175 million.

The one obstacle that could hamper the negotiations between the Yankees and Cano is the self-mandated $189 million payroll mark that the Bombers are trying to get to before 2014.

It’s seen as a goal, but Steinbrenner is looking at it as more of a requirement for the team.

You also have to factor in that the Yankees have $86.5 million tied to just five players alone in 2014: $23 million will go to CC Sabathia, $22.5 million will go to Mark Teixeira and $25 million will go to Alex Rodriguez.

With those three alone, that’s $70 million. Ichiro Suzuki will make $6.5 million as well in the new two-year deal he signed with the team this winter.

Plus, Derek Jeter has an $8 million option that could go up to as much as $17 million based on how well he plays, and the team has to figure out if they have to give Curtis Granderson an extension or not after 2013.

After 2013, the Yankees will have Mariano Rivera’s, Andy Pettitte’s, Hiroki Kuroda’s, Kevin Youkilis’ and Granderson’s contracts all off the books, which is a combined $64 million that could be used to get Cano back.

The Yankees would like it if they didn’t have another major contract hampering their payroll, but with Cano, the team may have no other choice but to pay him.

The question becomes, can the Yankees get the deal done before Cano hits free agency?

Before Cano signed Boras to be his agent, I think the Yankees would have gotten the deal done by now and this issue wouldn’t even be talked about at this point.

But there’s a reason why players like Cano hire a super agent like Boras for one simple reason: to get paid.

And Boras will use the deals given to Pujols, Votto and King Felix as a starting point in negotiations with the Yankees.

If the Yankees don’t lock up Cano before free agency, there are teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Angels and Washington Nationals with large checkbooks and GMs who are willing to spend on talent to improve their clubs.

Cano would certainly fit all of their needs.

But he fits the Yankees’ need the most because he is in fact their best everyday player.

Just how high are the Yankees willing to go to keep Cano? Would they be willing to go over the seven- or eight-year mark in a contract?

Right now, I think the Yankees will do whatever it takes to get Cano back, so I’ll say it’s a 50-50 shot of getting Cano back before free agency.

The team has yet to negotiate with Granderson regarding a new deal, and I think they will wait until the end of the season to determine if he comes back or not.

But with Cano and Boras, I think this will be ongoing through 2013 with the Yankees.

In the end, it all depends on if Cano gets an offer he is satisfied with taking and if the Yankees can live with the fact that they might have to overpay him in order for him to stay in the Bronx.

Stay tuned, Yankees Universe.

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The 10-year, $275 million contract Alex Rodriguez signed in 2007 is one of the biggest mistakes in the history of the New York Yankees. The only good thing that can be said about it is that it has taught the Yankees precisely where they should draw the line when it comes to long-term contracts.

Hence the reason they must proceed with caution with star second baseman Robinson Cano.

Cano is due to hit free agency at the end of the 2013 season, and the word from Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com is that there’s a “pretty decent chance” that the Yankees won’t stop Cano from hitting free agency by locking him up to a contract extension beforehand.

Cano and the Yankees don’t even appear to be anywhere close to an extension. The Yankees and Cano’s agent, the almighty Scott Boras, disagree on exactly how good Cano is. The Yankees think he’s a top-10 or maybe a top-15 player. Boras is peddling Cano as a top-five player.

“There are few elite players. That just is a very short list — less than five,” Boras told Heyman.

Cano is a career .308 hitter who has averaged 29 home runs over the last four seasons. He’s developed into an elite defensive second baseman, winning Gold Gloves two of the last three years. He’s finished in the top six of the AL MVP voting three straight years, and he had a higher WAR in 2012 than AL MVP Miguel Cabrera, whether you consult Baseball-Reference.com or FanGraphs.

All of this makes it very hard for the Yankees to argue with Boras about Cano being a top-five player, in which case he should be in line for a contract similar to the top five contracts in the league.

Those belong to A-Rod, Albert Pujols, Joey Votto, Prince Fielder and Joe Mauer. The average worth of their contracts, as Heyman pointed out, is $223 million. The shortest of the bunch is Mauer’s eight-year deal with the Minnesota Twins.

Thus, it’s going to take a contract in the eight to 10-year range and for at least $200 million for the Yankees to retain Cano. Even in a day and age when contracts are getting more and more ridiculous, that’s no small commitment.

The Yankees can handle the money part. They want to get under $189 million in 2014 and stay there if they can help it, sure. But they certainly have the funds to afford another $20ish million-per-year deal, and they presently only have about $81 million committed for 2014 and $68 million committed for 2015, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

It’s the years the Yankees should be worried about. Cano will be embarking on his age-30 season in 2013. That puts him a little too close to A-Rod circa 2007 territory, as he was coming off his age-31 season when he signed his 10-year megadeal. The Yankees know from the way his deal has panned out that they should fear the long-term future.

Heyman brought up some good points about Boras‘ likely defense if/when the Yankees bring up the A-Rod situation, saying Boras “will counter by saying Cano is his own entity and personality, a clean liver with a clean resume whose only similarity with A-Rod is that they share a clubhouse.”

Reading between the lines, the general message will be that there’s less to fear in Cano’s case because he hasn’t been doing anything he shouldn’t be doing. Outside of some silly rumor from last season, he’s never been linked to PEDs. His body isn’t a ticking time bomb.

The problem with any argument such as this one is that it chalks up A-Rod’s decline to his admitted PED use in the early 2000s. In reality, he’s aged about as well as any other player, and that’s to say not well at all.

Rodriguez was at the height of his career between 2003 and 2007, his age 27-31 seasons. His latest five-year sample size between 2008 and 2012, in which he’s gone from his age-32 season to his age-36 season, hasn’t been nearly as productive.

As the following table shows, he’s not alone there.

*Retired after 2011.

There’s no ignoring the trend. A-Rod isn’t the only player who went from being a star player between the ages of 27 and 31 to being much less of a star player between the ages of 32 and 36. He’s been better than the others but well short of his past greatness.

The only player in the above list who is still going strong is David Ortiz, and his situation comes with a couple caveats. One is that his body has been saved by years of DH duty. The other is that he’s not going that strong, as a good chunk of his 2012 season was lost to an Achilles injury.

The trend isn’t all that different if the ages are adjusted to be more in Cano’s territory. He’s come into his own between the ages of 26 and 29 over the last four seasons. Here’s a look at players who did the same between 2005 and 2008, and how they played over the next four years between the ages of 30 and 33.

Three of the five players here regressed with age. Chase Utley’s career is nearing its end due to knee problems. Jason Bay’s own career has been derailed largely due to injuries. Kevin Youkilis’ star status has gone away in a hurry over the last two years thanks to injuries.

The only player in this table who’s still going strong is Adrian Beltre, but it seems like he’s always playing through one nagging injury or another at any given time.

This data suggests that the Yankees would be taking their chances with Cano even if they were to sign him to a mere three- or four-year contract, as things get a little dicey when players get into their mid-30s. Utley’s case is particularly scary because he and Cano play the same position.

But the Yankees, of course, are going to have to give Cano an eight to 10-year contract to keep him. Such a contract would lock him up for his age-31 season through his age-38 season, at the very least.

Naturally, the recent track record for players in their late 30s is even less encouraging for players in their early 30s. Since 2005, only four players have accumulated at least a 10 WAR between their age-35 and age-38 seasons: Chipper Jones, Mark Grudzielanek, Derek Jeter and Jim Thome.

At the rate he’s going, A-Rod likely won’t be joining their company. He’s compiled a 5.7 WAR over the last two seasons, his age-35 and age-36 campaigns, and he’s going to miss at least half the 2013 season recovering from his latest hip surgery. Whether he’ll ever be a productive player again at his age and on two surgically repaired hips is doubtful.

At least A-Rod’s contract isn’t back-loaded. If Boras is looking to take after the contracts signed by Pujols, Votto and Fielder, Cano’s next contract will probably be back-loaded. Whoever signs Cano, be it the Yankees or somebody else, wouldn’t be getting poor performances at discounted rates if he were to be undone by age.

If I’m the Yankees, I’m only signing Cano to a long-term contract if the total cost is less than $200 million and if the years are in the five to seven range. To do this, I’d basically be doing the same thing they’re supposedly already doing, and that’s trying to convince Boras that Cano isn’t a top-five player worth a long-term contract for over $200 million per year.

As long as Cano is characteristically productive in 2013, the Yankees aren’t going to have any luck talking Boras down. Whether or not the Yankees are the ones who grant it, Boras will get his wish for Cano’s next contract one way or another.

So don’t think the Yankees won’t walk away from Cano after 2013 if the price tag doesn’t drop. They know all too well from A-Rod’s contract about the risks that come with long-term deals for players over 30, and they have every reason to believe that A-Rod’s slow destruction with age is not a freak occurrence. He’s not the first big-time ballplayer to be undone by age, nor will he be the last.

Come 2014, there could be somebody else manning second base for the Yankees, and they might have zero reservations about that.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.

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Most fans are well aware at this point of the New York Yankees‘ plan to cut payroll down to $189 million before the start of the 2014 season.

Entering the 2013, the Yankees have at least 10 significant players on their roster that can or will be free agents after the season.

Their budget plans will make it next to impossible to bring back everyone.

There are players the Yanks would like to bring back but won’t be given a chance to.

There are players the Yanks will have no interest in re-signing.

Then there are the players the Yanks absolutely want and need to bring back, but the price may dictate a different outcome.

The following is a list of players for whom a big 2013 season could mean a major contract in the future.

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The New York Yankees off-season has been a quiet one due to ownership implementing a new frugal stance.

Instead of story-lines about signing the biggest free agents, Yankee fans were relegated to watching the realities of missing the 2013 postseason grow by the day.

So as a result, fans, the media, and bloggers alike have been provided with plenty of things to grumble about.

And for the first time in almost two decades, the paved regular-season road to October that the Yankees build during the off-season is no longer a smooth ride.

But in reality, not all hope is lost yet; and here are three reasons why.

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It would be difficult to argue that for the past three seasons, the best everyday player on the Yankees hasn’t been one of their pricey acquisitions like Alex Rodriguez or Mark Teixeira or even their hall of fame stalwart, Derek Jeter.

Since 2010, that title has been held by homegrown, Dominican-born second baseman Robinson Cano, who’s been the linchpin in a potent Yankee offense.

At age 30, Cano is entering the final year of a team-friendly six-year contract he agreed to back in 2008. Though he’ll earn a healthy $15 million in 2013, Cano, with super-agent Scott Boras on his flank, has his sights set on an historic payday when he hits free agency next winter.

Though Cano is sometimes overlooked and under-appreciated in a clubhouse full of former superstars and electric personalities, his numbers the past three seasons have been among the very best in baseball.

That’s not to say he wasn’t outstanding before, but since 2010 Cano has elevated his game to a level which few middle infielders have reached. The Yankee second baseman has earned three top-six AL MVP finishes and amassed an fWAR of 20.1, tying him for second among all position players for that stretch.  His .311 batting average places eleventh and his 142 wRC+ and his .539 slugging percentage rank 12th.

Cano has conquered aspects of the game that were once considered weaknesses. He posted a career-high walk rate of 8.8 percent in 2012 and his UZR since 2010 is a respectable 6.0. He’s transformed himself from a below-average defender into a two-time Gold Glove winner.

So how is any of this a problem? Cano’s great at baseball—the Yankees have millions of dollars lying between the sofa cushions at their executive offices—pay the man whatever he wants. That’s how it’s always worked before.

Thanks to higher luxury taxes imposed by baseball’s new CBA, the Yankees are, for the first time in generations, operating with fiscal austerity in hopes of dropping their payroll below the luxury tax threshold of $189 million by 2014.

With A-Rod, Teixeira and C.C. Sabathia accounting for roughly $72 million in average annual value for years to come, the Yankees are left with little flexibility to chase free agents.

Cano isn’t looking to take a hometown discount the way Evan Longoria and David Wright did when they agreed to long-term extensions this fall. You don’t hire Boras as your agent unless you’re planning to extract every last dollar.

Cano may not get an A-Rod/Albert Pujols style decade-long pact, but he’ll come pretty close.

With no other major stars on the market next year, unless Jacoby Ellsbury stays healthy and channels 2011, Cano is likely to land an eight- or even nine-year deal worth between $23 and $25 million per season.

Cano’s situation places the Yankees in an unenviable bind.

Signing him means committing close to $100 million annually to just four players. The team would need to skimp on other serious needs.

After next season, three fifths of the rotation will be free agents, with Andy Pettitte and Hiroki Kuroda both contemplating retirement on a yearly basis.

Derek Jeter and Curtis Granderson will also hit the market, Ichiro Suzuki will be 41, and the Yankees still have no starting catcher. Then there’s A-Rod, who’s moving closer to a future as a full-time DH with each mounting injury.

While Michael Pineda, Manny Banuelos and Tyler Austin may be ready to contribute by 2014, the rest of the team’s top prospects are father away.

A $189 million roster that features Cano may not contain the depth or the overall talent to which Yankee fans have grown accustomed, but the damage done by letting the lifetime .308 hitter walk would be more significant.

Under the rules of the CBA, the Yankees can raise their payroll above the tax threshold again in 2015 without paying the humongous penalties they’d be charged in 2014.

Waiting and replacing Cano at that point won’t be an option.

Thanks to increased revenues around baseball, more stars are being locked up by their teams, and fewer impact players become free agents in their primes. The 2015 free agent market is even weaker than its 2014 counterpart, with no real middle-of-the-order bats in its midst.

Letting Cano walk would create a void that would linger for years.

One radical idea would be to trade Cano now—get value for him—hopefully for a package that could fill multiple holes in the future. In reality, that’s just not an option.

Cano’s trade market would be limited, thanks to his impending free agency and his association with Boras. With A-Rod gone until June or July and a roster whose median age rivals the cast of the Golden Girls, the Yankees simply can’t compete in an improved AL East without Cano at the heart of their order.

Though budget-conscious may be an unfamiliar state for the pinstripes, they’re not going to punt a season—not when they could still be very good if things break (or don’t break, more accurately) right…not when there are 52,000 tickets to sell every night.

Some argue that handing out eight-, nine- and 10-year deals has caused more problems than it’s solved for the Yankees.

That’s true, but also unavoidable.

Thanks to their need to compete every year and the impatience of the New York media and fans—especially those willing to spring for luxury boxes and champions’ suites—the Yankees don’t have the opportunity to build a team with young, cheap players.

They need to sign—and keep—free agents, and to do so they need to pay market value. That these deals turn into albatrosses down the line is something that has to be accepted in return for immediate production.

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New York Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano became a U.S. citizen earlier this month and the New York Daily News reported Thursday that he plans to don the red, white and blue next spring during the World Baseball Classic.

The red, white and blue of the Dominican Republic, that is.

Cano told the Daily News:

“I still have to play for the Dominican, even if I didn’t want to. If I played for the U.S., I don’t think they would ever let me come home. You saw what happened with Alex (Rodriguez); a lot of people got upset in the Dominican when he played for the U.S.” 

Cano’s decision may annoy some folks in the U.S., but don’t mistake loyalty to the Dominican Republic as a rejection of his adopted home country.

According to the Daily News, Cano began preparing to take the citizenship test in spring training. He went to school in the Newark, N.J., area for three years before returning to the Dominican while he was in high school.

His mother became a citizen in 2011, prompting Cano’s decision to follow suit.

“I spend more time in New York than the Dominican,” Cano told the Daily News. “I play here, I live here, so why not become a citizen?”

Cano is entering the final year of his contract in 2013 with no discussions on the horizon about an extension. Cano is not expected to offer the Yankees any sort of a hometown discount, according to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, particularly not after hiring Scott Boras to represent him.

Boras has already said that he thinks the Yankees are making a mistake with their plan to trim payroll to less than the $189 million luxury-tax threshold in 2014.

“Are you going to put your brand at risk, when your brand is having more superstars than anyone else?” Boras told FOXSports.com earlier this month. “Superstars are good for business. Superstars make money for franchises and their television networks.”

Sherman said there are “strong indications” that serious talks between Boras and the Yankees about Cano won’t happen until Cano’s contract expires next fall. As that is Boras’ usual strategy when negotiating for his premier clients on the verge of free agency, that statement certainly makes sense.

Back to the World Baseball Classic. The Dominican Republic will be playing in Pool C at San Juan, Puerto Rico, from March 7-10 along with Venezuela, Puerto Rico and one of the four nations that survived qualifying (Spain, Canada, Brazil and Chinese Taipei). The championship round is scheduled for March 17-19 at AT&T Park in San Francisco.

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Even though the San Francisco Giants are fully focused on their game tonight against the St. Louis Cardinals, there will baseball beyond 2012.

Whenever it is that the Giants enter the off-season, they will need to carefully consider the annual crop of free agents to decide who can best give them a chance to win in 2013.

Here are three candidates worthy of San Francisco’s attention. 

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The New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers are exposing the MLB playoffs, and the game of baseball in general, for what they really are.

In baseball, a single pitch in a hitter’s hot zone could be the deciding factor between a World Series appearance or historical insignificance. More often than not, a confident team feeding off of recent success is better-suited for October than a team that appears to be superior on paper.

In the case of the 2012 American League Championship Series, the Tigers are playing the role of the team that’s on fire, and the Yankees are starring as the team that can’t remember how good it was in the regular season.

The series is not over, of course. The Yankees have a huge hurdle to clear tonight against Justin Verlander, but the playing field will be more even if New York can avoid the 3-0 hole.

In order to do so, there are a few things the Bronx Bombers must accomplish tonight. If they don’t, it’s going to be a long offseason in the Big Apple.

Stop striking out and get some hits.

We knew coming into October that the Yankees live and die by the long ball. Strikeouts are part of loading the batting order with power hitters, but the prevailing notion was that New York had enough big bats in the lineup to make up for all the strikeouts. 

Turns out that this was an incorrect diagnosis. The Yankees have given new life to the term “free-swinging,” averaging 9.6 strikeouts per outing in their seven playoff games. They’ve struck out 20 times (against just five walks) in two games against Detroit, which has contributed heavily to their going 3-for-18 with runners in scoring position.

The biggest offender has been Robinson Cano. The graceful second baseman has forgotten how to hit, batting 2-for-22 with four strikeouts in the playoffs. That’s a .091 clip for a guy that hit .313 in the regular season. With Justin Verlander taking the mound tonight, the Yankees have to find a way to get good wood on the ball fast, or their season will be for naught. 

Keep the lineup steady.

The big story throughout the playoffs has been whether or not manager Joe Girardi should drop Alex Rodriguez from third in the batting order. Girardi did eventually drop A-Rod—but he switched up a lot more in the process. 

Even before Derek Jeter got injured, Girardi had made questionable decisions. Raul Ibanez had played the hero against Baltimore in the late innings, but that didn’t justify putting him in the cleanup spot. Russell Martin hit .211 during the season and shouldn’t be hitting in the five-hole, and Curtis Granderson, while he does strike out a lot, still shouldn’t be hitting seventh. 

The Yankees need to go back to what made them successful—batting the right guys in the right spots and letting them do their jobs. I understand that the bats have been silenced, but it only takes one good game to awaken a lineup. Hitters are creatures of habit, and constantly shifting them around, in addition to the pressure they face in the playoffs, is the worst strategy to try and shake things up.

Regain that New York swagger—before it’s gone for a while.

Part of the reason the Yankees had such a great regular season is because they scared teams with their power and versatility. Few teams can match the Yankees’ lineup from top to bottom, and New York finished second in the majors in scoring.

They seem to have lost all semblance of that confident team in this postseason. The shocking thing is, it’s not like the Yankees have young players who have little experience. This is the oldest roster in baseball, and it’s wilting under the bright lights like its never been on a big stage before.

In order for the Yankees to beat Verlander, they need to remember how good they really are.

Jeter’s injury is a huge blow, but that doesn’t mean guys like Cano, Granderson, Mark Teixeira, and Nick Swisher should be struggling as well. It’s impossible to fathom how far the Yanks have fallen. It seems like literally every player has hit a cold streak at the exact same time, and there’s no way to return to form without gaining back that good old Yankee swagger.

This brings another issue into play: the Yankees’ age.

The roster has an average age of 31.7 years, by far the oldest in the majors. If the Yankees don’t wake up now, they’ll soon see that their amazing run of playoff successes in the last decade will be a distant memory. It’s time to put up or shut up.

The window is closing on the New York Yankees.

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After about half of a day of uncertainty—no thanks to Hall of Fame writer Peter Gammons—the Robinson Cano performance-enhancing drug rumors can be put to bed as false.

Bob Nightengale of USA Today broke the news yesterday that a MLB official denied such rumors:

A Major League Baseball official with knowledge of the league’s drug testing confirmed that New York Yankees All-Star second baseman Robinson Cano did not test positive for a performance-enhancing substance.

This is no doubt great news for the sport, and more specifically the Yankees and their fans. Losing Cano would have been a huge blow to the team’s playoff hopes, and the league would’ve had to deal with another PED black eye had one of its best players tested positive.

But thankfully, all that will be avoided.

However, one can’t help but be taken aback by the lack of care that was taken in reporting such rumors about Cano.

The first guilty party in this whole mess is sports reporter Dan Tordjman of Eyewitness News in Charlotte, NC, who originally tweeted the untrue rumor about Cano’s positive PED test. His account has now become protected, but Zach Stoloff of NESN.com shared the original tweet with us in a piece he wrote.

It’s one thing for some unknown sports reporter to totally botch sharing a piece of information he may or may not have had, but it’s another thing for a Hall of Fame baseball writer and analyst like Peter Gammons to take the unconfirmed information and run with it.

Gammons shared what he knew about the Cano rumors in a radio interview which can be heard on CSNNE.com:

“I heard something . . . about three weeks ago,” the veteran baseball reporter and analyst said Thursday on ‘Felger & Mazz’ on WBZ-FM (98.5 The Sports Hub). “And, like a lot of things, I’ve . . . never gotten any confirmation.”

Gammons then went on to doubt the rumors:

“I’m not sold on the Cano thing yet,” Gammons said. “Especially since most of the time, Scott Boras clients are very careful…”

But just when you think Gammons saved some shred of credibility for himself in this matter, he then goes on to compare it to the Melky Cabrera situation, giving the Cano rumor legs once again:

Now, people are very careful about letting any information out . . . [But] these things do circulate. The one that did turn out to be true — but, again, I could never get confirmation [even though] I was told by about six sources for five weeks — was Melky Cabrera (of the Giants, who was suspended for PED use last month).”

Gammons should have been more responsible in the way he handled this situation.

Without anything being confirmed to him, Gammons piled on top of what was a story started by a two-bit sports reporter from North Carolina. Instead of shooting the rumors down as nothing more than just that, Gammons added legitimacy to the controversy by stoking the flames with what he said he heard.

But in fact, it wasn’t reliable information at all and the only reason it was slightly more credible than that of Tordjman’s is because Gammons is well known and well respected around the sport.

Gammons should know better that the things he says, whether he confirms the information or not, are taken as gold by the majority of the baseball world. He has developed a long-standing trust over the years in the MLB, so naturally people trust Gammons when he speaks.

With that being said, Gammons should have chosen his words more carefully and not added legitimacy to what was otherwise an unconfirmed and false report.

After this mess, the respect for Gammons and the job he does could very well change. Or at the very least, it could certainly change with Yankee fans around the globe.

Gammons is a Boston native and a former Boston Red Sox writer from The Boston Globe, so naturally that connection will be made over and over again. It is a legit connection, however, and could explain why Gammons handled this situation so poorly.

I would be interested to see if Gammons would be so quick to spew unconfirmed information out if it was about his hometown Red Sox and their best player.

In the digital age we live in now, new information is always coming out incredibly fast, but hard news journalists must be careful before taking the lid off a story before it is confirmed.

It’s not surprising that a hack like Tordjman screwed up badly, but it is a sad day in the world of sports journalism when a professional and baseball insider the likes of Peter Gammons adds fuel to that screw up by speculating on a rumor he doesn’t even know is true.

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The race for the 2012 American League Most Valuable Player award looks to be a close one.

Among the top candidates are familiar names you might expect. But this season, we also have a breakout rookie superstar who changed the race as soon as he was called up to the majors.

Bleacher Report’s MLB Lead Writer Ian Casselberry and Pop Culture Lead Writer Gabe Zaldivar name the top candidates for the AL MVP and make their picks for the eventual winner.

Who is your choice for AL MVP? Do you disagree with our picks? Did we snub anyone from the list? Sound off in the comments section below.

Follow Gabe Zaldivar on Twitter @gabezal

Follow Ian Casselberry on Twitter @iancass

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