Lost in the excitement of Brandon Nimmo‘s historic day and the Mets’ offense exploding for 19 runs on Monday against the Washington Nationals to notch their 20th win was starter Griffin Canning who got through five scoreless innings and has been just as good as the rest of New York’s starting pitchers to begin the season.
Canning had to battle through those five frames with traffic on the basepaths in almost every inning, but the right-hander executed pitches when he needed to and left the game unscathed.
“I thought he was good,” said manager Carlos Mendoza. “They made him work. He had to work for a couple innings… He had to make pitches, kept making pitches, executed when he needed to, got strikeouts with the breaking ball, with the slider. Overall, I thought it was good.”
Facing a scrappy Nationals team that came from behind in two walk-off wins in the series, Canning found himself in trouble on more than a few occasions.
In fact, in each of the first four innings, Washington had a runner in scoring position that Canning had to maneuver his way around. Which he did.
The 28-year-old who signed a one-year, $4.25 million contract in the offseason is now 4-1 with a 2.61 ERA over six starts in his first season in New York. In four of those starts, he’s allowed one earned run or fewer and has shown a remarkable ability to remain calm in sticky situations like his 1.39 WHIP would suggest.
“I think it’s just a one-pitch-at-a-time mentality,” Canning said about getting out of trouble. “Don’t try and get out of the situation. I think sometimes you can get it too big, so just focusing on executing one pitch at a time.”
While the final score ended up being a blowout, those evacuations came with the game still tight and a lot of pressure on Canning to keep the lead, especially after Sunday’s disheartening loss.
Canning ended his outing with a 1-2-3 fifth inning, his first clean inning of the game, including two strikeouts. He finished with five strikeouts and threw 90 pitches (56 strikes).
“Pretty good,” he said about his performance. “I’d like to get deeper into the game. I just think I can clean up some stuff with my execution of the changeup and slider when I’m ahead of the count, but I’m not gonna complain about putting five zeros up.”
So far, the one knock on Canning has been his length. He hasn’t gone more than six innings once and is averaging just over 5.1 innings per start.
However, it’s possible Mendoza could’ve sent him back out for the sixth had the Mets not scored three in the top half of the inning to take what appeared to be, at the time, a big 6-0 lead.
Regardless, Canning has been a pleasant surprise for his new club after he spent five seasons with the Los Angeles Angels, compiling a 25-34 record with a 4.78 ERA.
It’s still too early to tell how the entire season will play out, but in the short term, president of baseball operations David Stearns deserves a ton of credit for seeing something in Canning and helping unlock it for New York’s benefit as it withstands the losses of Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas.
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