Making his first start for the Rakuten Eagles, Rasner coasted through the first three innings against the Nippon Ham Fighters, retiring nine of 10 batters as his team took a 4-0 lead.

But things took a turn for the worse in the fourth inning.

Former San Diego Padres outfielder Terrmel Sledge hit a two-run homer, the first of six straight hits given up by Rasner, who was taken out after giving up six runs on eight hits over 3 1-3 innings.

He has already amply demonstrated these tools at his position. It’s more than great hands. He pivots beautifully, he can make a strong, accurate throw off the wrong foot, when he has to, he’s great at catching pop-ups in shallow right…I could go on.

His tools add up to playing a superior 2B, which he has done.

If he were Mickey Mantle, then I could be as enthusiastic about him as you are

Here’s my concern: Gardner is a good outfielder. But for someone as fast and indeed, as QUICK, as he is, there is something of a disconnect.

His quickness does not translate into a superior break on the ball or a smooth path to it.

He has a tendency to turn the wrong way. Fortunately, he has the dash to outrun the ball , but he is not going to get to everything. In fact, he’s going to have to play deeper in our park, in deference to its CF.

Gardner likes to play shallow. He likes to play aggressively. Our CF is bigger than he is fast, however, and he’s going to have to split the difference, make an adjustment and play deeper. He can’t charge everything in our park.

And you can’t compare him with Bernie. Gardner’s arm is better, but that’s not saying much. Bernie was an utterly graceful, off-the-bat, straight-line-to-the-ball CF. Bernie also had the long strides and got to balls Gardner won’t, despite the former’s range.

People can talk all they want about a CF’s arm not being relevant, but in YS – even this imposter version – it is. Mantle didn’t get a great jump, either, but he had ridiculous speed and great power in his legs, and a rocket arm for what he couldn’t outrun.

It’s one thing to be excited about a guy’s speed; I am, too. But to close one’s eyes to the player’s glaring defensive weakness – his arm – coupled with the lack of an arm in RF – I’m not sure what purpose that serves.

Teams will run on us. And often.

If Tampa, Boston and the Yankees were to pitch exactly the same level and the Yankees would be in big trouble because then Tampa and Boston would allow far fewer runs due to their defense.

That’s what I mean by “disproportionately better.” The Yankees pitching just can’t be as good as Tampa or the Sox. It needs to be better.

Not only does Boston have the better defense their offense looks to be slightly better as well.

So chances are Boston will score more runs and their defense will allow fewer runs.

That means the only area where the yankees have left to make up that gap is in their pitching.

And that means their pitching will have to be disproportionately better.

That’s what you’d think on Cano but that wasn’t the case last year.

Sure his ability didn’t change but he was a very poor defensive player last year. Very poor – far below league average at 2b.

He was nowhere close to being as good as he was in 2007. I think he just started taking his troubles at the plate into the field and just melted down.

It’s unclear what kind of defensive player he truly is just as it’s unclear how good a baseball player he is because he’s been so inconsistent.

He has great hands – both at the plate and in the field. But tools are just tools unless they are translated into consistent performance on the field.

Consistent performance both within individual seasons (pre all star break vs post break) and between different seasons (2007 vs. 2008)