NEW YORK -- Since David Stearns took over as president of baseball operations in Flushing, the Mets -- despite featuring one of the game¡¯s highest payrolls -- have shied away from allocating significant resources toward starting pitchers.
Two offseasons ago, the Mets acquired Luis Severino and Sean Manaea on prove-it deals, betting they could help the former stay healthy and teach the latter to harness his arsenal in new and different ways. Both bets paid off.
Perhaps emboldened by that success, Stearns followed a similar path last offseason with Clay Holmes, Frankie Montas and Griffin Canning, each of whom came with a major red flag. Holmes hadn¡¯t been a starting pitcher in years. Montas, like Severino, had struggled to stay healthy.
Then there was Canning, whose flag may have been reddest. Statistically, the right-hander was coming off one of the worst seasons of any Major League pitcher, which included MLB¡¯s lowest WAR total among qualified arms, its third-highest ERA and its fourth-lowest K/9 rate. He lost 13 games, more than all but four of his peers. But when the last-place Angels non-tendered him, the Mets saw only opportunity, plucking Canning out of free agency for $4.25 million guaranteed.
Stearns¡¯ hope was that the Mets could leverage their resources to reorient Canning¡¯s career, much as they did with Severino and Manaea. The vision looked a lot like what happened Thursday at Citi Field, where Canning struck out eight Cardinals over six innings in a 4-1 Mets win.
¡°He¡¯s been stellar,¡± said third baseman Mark Vientos, who homered leading off the second to spark a four-run inning. ¡°He¡¯s been looking good. Happy we¡¯ve got him on our team.¡±
Coming off an illness that weakened him enough to alter New York¡¯s rotation order, Canning was understandably shaky early, walking two batters in the first inning and cracking for a run in the third on Brendan Donovan¡¯s RBI hit. But he was untouchable after that. Following Alec Burleson¡¯s leadoff single in the fourth inning, Canning retired the final nine batters he faced.
He allowed just three hits on the night, finishing with the second-highest Game Score (68) of any Mets starter this season.
¡°I feel like tonight is kind of the blueprint,¡± Canning said. ¡°Tonight is how I want to pitch.¡±
Like any smart team, the Mets do not use a one-size-fits-all approach when they take on pitching projects. Severino¡¯s renaissance, for example, happened in the weight room and the kitchen. Manaea engineered his own a-ha moment, dropping his arm angle to great effect. The Mets encouraged him to go with it.
Canning¡¯s changes have been more subtle. Initially, pitching coach Jeremy Hefner and other Mets staffers told him to emphasize his best pitches -- in the right-hander¡¯s case, his slider and changeup. Yet those tweaks have been modest. Canning has indeed thrown his slider more often, for example, but not an obscene amount more. He worked on a sinker in Spring Training but has barely used it.
Instead, Canning has focused on becoming as unpredictable as possible. In his first three starts, he frequently pitched ¡°backward¡± -- a reference to throwing offspeed pitches early in counts and surprising hitters with fastballs late. Yet Thursday, Canning reversed course. After Donovan jumped on 1-0 changeups in each of his first two at-bats, hitting each of them hard, Canning and catcher Luis Torrens shared a look.
The batterymates didn¡¯t need to say anything more.
¡°It just kind of felt like they were sitting offspeed,¡± Canning said.
In response, Torrens began asking for more fastballs, which Canning often delivered high in the strike zone to unbalance Cardinals hitters. When Canning saw Donovan one last time in the sixth, he pounded the left-handed hitter with four-seamers, cutters and hard sliders.
¡°He has the ability to make adjustments, to be a little bit creative,¡± Torrens said.
Through four starts, Canning has a 3.43 ERA, nearly two full runs lower than his mark last season. He¡¯s striking out batters close to 50 percent more often. Perhaps most importantly, Canning is showing a penchant for adapting on the fly, which may just allow him to keep this up all season.
¡°He¡¯s got the ability to read the situation and to read what lineups and hitters are trying to do to him,¡± manager Carlos Mendoza said. ¡°When he knows that they are sitting on his breaking pitches, he¡¯s going to use the fastball. And when they are attacking his fastball, he¡¯s going to use the other weapons. That¡¯s the biggest thing for me.¡±