Angels Castoff Proving Halos Made Big Mistake By Giving Up on Him

When spring training camps opened their doors in February, Griffin Canning was not among the Top 5 starting pitchers on the New York Mets' depth chart.

The former Angels pitcher, who was traded to Atlanta last October in the Jorge Soler deal, and cut by the Braves a month later, is not only in the Mets' rotation — he's thriving.

For the bargain price of $4.25 million, the Mets have gotten a 2.36 ERA and 5-1 record out of Canning through eight starts.

Tuesday, when MLB.com polled its staff for the Cy Young Award winners in each league, Canning received a single first-place vote.

Although that's a small token of support in the grand scheme of Canning's early-season performance, it's indicative of just how far the right-hander has come since he was jettisoned by two teams — first by the Angels, then the Braves — in the last seven months.

Canning is coming off a season in which he posted a 5.19 ERA over a career-high 171.2 innings across 32 appearances and 31 starts for the Angels. His strikeout rate dropped to a career-low 6.8 per nine innings, accompanied by a below-average walk rate.

Canning also experienced a noticeable dip in velocity. He surrendered an American League-leading 99 earned runs.

Against this backdrop, the Angels did relatively well in getting Soler for Canning. The veteran outfielder has a .228/.305/419 slash line (103 OPS+) in 38 games. He's hit six home runs and driven in 16 for a team that's been starved for offense all season long. Soler hasn't been the main issue in the Angels' 17-23 start.

Still, the Angels can only wonder what went wrong in their development of Canning, an Orange County native who was their second-round draft pick out of UCLA in 2017.

Canning went 25-34 in five seasons in Anaheim, missing all of 2022 with a major back injury. Health was the obvious shortcoming for the right-hander, but a 4.78 ERA (93 ERA+) when healthy suggests the Angels could have done more for Canning's development.

Now 29, Canning has re-introduced a cutter while dramatically increasing his slider usage with the Mets.

The results have spoken for themselves. While he's unlikely to leapfrog the favorites — Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Paul Skenes, Logan Webb, et.al. — in the Cy Young race, it's clear Canning is back on track with a change of scenery.