Cano, with a noticeably bigger chest, said he added 10 pounds of muscle during the offseason and increased his weight to 205.

"I'm always working hard, trying to get better every year," Cano said yesterday. "I don't want to do the same thing every year. I want to keep getting better and better."

"I called him [Larry Bowa] right away to tell him I wanted to work on my footwork and things like that at second and for the double play," Cano said. "Last year, when Luis Sojo was a coach, we worked so I would get better every day, so now I'm doing that with Larry Bowa. It's not only [the technical] part of playing. My concentration is something I know I need to improve. I need to learn to focus on every play, and not to bring frustration onto the field with me after a bad at-bat. If I didn't get a hit in a big spot last year, I was thinking about that in field. I was a different player [at second base] when I was hitting, definitely."

"We've talked about focus and concentration," Bowa said. "This kid has great skills, but you have to remember he doesn't even have a full year in the big leagues. "He can appear to be — I don't want to say, 'lackadaisical,' — but his concentration sometimes leaves him. But he has big skills."

Jeter has had that same kind of talk himself with Cano."I've talked to Robbie to tell him to continue to work, because it was hard work that got him to this level," the captain said. "I want him to understand that it's a lot easier to make it than it is to stay here, and we all know how hard it is to make it."