When Griffin Canning was traded from the Angels to the Braves this past Halloween, there was immediate conversation on Baseball Twitter about whether the Braves would "fix" Canning and turn him into the 2025 version of Reynaldo Lopez. With Canning off to a strong start to begin the 2025 season, it appears there was reason to be optimistic about the 29-year-old; only, he may have found his answers in New York instead of Atlanta.
Less than a month after trading for Canning, the Braves didn't tender him a contract, satisfied in simply saving money by trading Jorge Soler for Canning weeks earlier. That allowed the Mets to swoop in and sign Canning to a one-year, $4.25 million deal. It's a move that has worked wonders for both sides.
"I love it here," smiled Canning earlier this week. "I'm really enjoying my time. Everything is top of the line. I'm enjoying the change in scenery and just kind of experiencing something new."
Canning has spent every season of his professional career with the Los Angeles Angels after being a second-round pick in the 2017 MLB Draft. Canning was also born in Mission Viejo, California, and spent three seasons pitching in college for UCLA, so shipping off to New York may be the biggest change of scenery he's had in his baseball career.
You can't blame him for choosing the Mets either. Since the regime change in New York two seasons ago, the Mets have begun building a reputation as a pitcher-friendly organization that creates smart plans to maximize the skills of their pitchers. Just last season, the Mets coached Luis Severino to a 3.91 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, and 21.2% strikeout rate after a season with the Yankees where he seemed totally lost and registered a 6.65 ERA and 19% strikeout rate. They also changed Sean Manea's arm slot and pitch mix to help drive him to a 3.47 ERA and 1.08 WHIP in 181.2 innings, the best season of his career.
Perhaps Canning can be next. After breaking out with a 3.65 ERA and 26.3% strikeout rate in the minors in 2018, and then producing a 3.99 ERA and 23.5% strikeout rate with the Angels in 2020, Canning's progress has halted. Injuries have certainly played a part, as he dealt with elbow irritation last year, a groin strain in 2023, and a lower back stress fracture in 2021 that sidelined him for the whole 2022 season.
The 29-year-old is healthy now and looking for something new. Part of that openness to something new has been changing his approach to pitch backwards, using breaking balls as the foundation of his pitch mix instead of fastballs.
"The conversation this spring was just kind of like, 'Hey, these are your best pitches. Why not lean on these?'" remembered Canning.
It's a simple concept, but one that has worked for many pitchers before and could be working for Canning as well. Heading into his start on Saturday against the Athletics, Canning has allowed three runs on eight hits in 9.2 innings over his first two starts while striking out 10 and walking five. It's not a perfect start, but his swinging strike rate is up, his CSW is the highest it's ever been, and his hard contact allowed is down.
It's too early in the season to call anything a breakout, but the added emphasis on using his best pitches more could have been the simple tweak that Canning needed to build on the promise he has tantalized with. Throughout his five-year MLB career, the best pitch for Canning has always been his slider. Since the 2021 season, he has never used it less than 24% of the time in a season, and it has never posted a swinging strike rate (SwStr%) below 16.7%. For comparison sake, the MLB average SwStr% for starting pitcher sliders is 15.3%, so Canning has always been able to miss bats with the slider, and it has graded out as his best pitch on most pitch grading models for years.
This year, the Mets have asked Canning to go to that slider even more. In his first two starts, he has used his slider 44.3% of the time. While that 20% usage jump from 2024 to this year may seem jarring, it feels almost natural to him. "It's kind of something I've done my whole life, pitch backwards," explained Canning. "I feel like it's more of just getting back to being myself and what my strengths are. So yeah, it's been a pretty easy transition."
Part of making that transition to use the slider more often has been recapturing the feel of the pitch, which seemed to get away from Canning in 2024. "For whatever reason, last year just didn't have as much depth on it," he admitted. "This year, it could be a product of just throwing it a little bit more, just having a little better feel for it, but, yeah, just a little bit more depth [on it]."
The depth Canning is referencing is the vertical break on his slider. In 2024, he had just three inches of vertical break, which was down from 5.1 inches in 2023. Instead of that being connected to a conscious pitch shape change, it seems as if Canning simply lost the feel for his slider. Yet, in 2025, the pitch is back to registering 6.6 inches of vertical break, which has helped improve its performance and grades on the pitch models.
While Canning himself is not obsessive over tracking pitch shape data, he acknowledges that the information can help in situations like his, where you're trying to identify why you may be struggling with a given pitch.
"Pitch shape data is a really good tool to kind of understand when a pitch is starting to get away from you and being able to reel it back in and not let it get too far off track," he said. "But at the end of the day, you just got to get outs, so I probably have more of a focus on that and executing pitches. At the same time, just kind of understanding, like, 'Hey, maybe I need to spend this week working on this pitch a little bit more.'"
That focus on executing his pitches is paying off for Canning early on because, in addition to the added depth on his slider, Canning is commanding it better than he has in years. Through two starts, the zone rate on Canning's slider is the highest it's ever been, as is his 77% strike rate on the pitch, which is 94th percentile in baseball. According to Pitcher List, Canning also has a 29% Early Called Strike rate on his slider, which means that nearly 30% of his sliders thrown in 0-0, 0-1, 1-0, and 1-1 counts are going for called strikes. That's much improved from his career numbers and well above the league average.
So Canning is leaning on his best pitch more, but also regaining comfort with it to help him execute the pitch better than he has in recent years. All of that is cause for optimism, and he's also working to reshape his arsenal around that pitch to set himself up for as much success as possible. Part of that involves bringing back a cutter, which he threw four times during the 2021 season but has not used otherwise.
"I've thrown a couple of cutters this year," confirmed Canning. "I'm just figuring out the right spot and the right guys to use it. It's just kind of to keep my slider and change up open as much as I can. Those are the pitches I'm going to lean on, so just being able to show guys something else where they have to respect it a little bit usually helps."
Even though the cutter itself is unlikely to be a big part of Canning's pitch mix this season, its inclusion could further help his best pitches.
Against right-handed batters, Canning's cutter will create an extra layer of deception to his slider. Of the minimal cutters he's thrown in 2025, the pitch has 6.1 inches of vertical break, which is similar to the slider, but has slightly less horizontal movement and comes in 3.5 mph faster. That means a hitter who is expecting the slider might be late on a cutter or take a longer swing to anticipate the break of the slider and get jammed. Meanwhile, Canning can locate the cutter up and in against a lefty, as he did against Yordan Alvarez, in order to have the hitter look inside, which will open up the outside part of the plate for his changeup, another of his bread-and-butter pitches.
Last year, the changeup was Canning's highest-graded pitch by PLV, which factors location into pitch grades, and was easily his best pitch against lefties. He threw the pitch over 32% of the time to lefties last year, registering a well-above-average 17.8% SwStr% and 66% strike rate overall while allowing a 36% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR), which is right in line with league averages. All of which is to say that Canning's changeup to lefties is often a strike, misses a lot of bats, and gives up a league-average amount of meaningful contact.
That pitch figures to be a weapon for Canning again in 2025, but relying on those two offerings more, plus adding in the changeup, means that some other pitches need to be used less.
"I probably won't throw [the curve] as much as I have in the past," Canning admits. Although that's not necessarily a bad thing. His curveball has graded out fairly average over the years and posted a below-average swinging strike rate, ICR, and CSW last year. Yet, Canning will still have the pitch in his back pocket if the game or season dictates that he mix it in from time to time.
"Teams are going to be constantly adjusting to you," he said. "It could just be a game-to-game thing. Once we make a few more starts, and your percentages are out there a little bit more, then teams are going to make adjustments, and so you've got to be ready to adjust too."
Another change to watch for this season has been the added vertical movement on Canning's four-seam fastball. Through two starts, Canning has had 17 inches of induced vertical break (or rise) on his four-seam fastball, compared to 15.6 inches last season. That has lowered his Vertical Approach Angle, which means his fastball is flatter, or resisting gravity more, which can make it harder to hit if it's used up in the zone. That makes it a good thing that Canning is using the pitch up in the zone nearly 69% of the time in 2025, after doing so just 54% of the time last year.
While getting the fastball up in the zone has been a conscious choice for Canning, the added vertical movement is not something that he spent much time focusing on this off-season. "Feels like something with the game intensity," he admitted. "When the season started, it just kind of clicks in, but, yeah, hopefully it's a trend that sticks around."
The Mets and fantasy managers hope it's a trend that sticks around, too. However, even by simply leaning into a focus on pitching backwards and creating a pitch mix built to support that attack plan, Canning could be emerging as an impactful member of this Mets rotation and another success story for a pitching development team that is beginning to make a habit out of turning careers around for veteran starters.
