Canning pitches 7 dominant innings THE SCORE
ANAHEIM » The last time Griffin Canning recorded at least 21 outs in a baseball game, it was played in a stadium with photos of the players' family members occupying seats and fake crowd noise pumped in over the ballpark speakers.
Canning worked seven innings in the Angels' 4-0 victory over the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday night, his longest outing since he went eight innings once during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
Canning helped lift the Angels (27-23) to their third straight victory, and their fifth in the past six games. By taking the first two of this series against Boston, the Angels have now won back-to-back series for the first time since they did so last month against the Kansas City Royals and Oakland A's. The Angels hadn't won any series against teams with winning records before these two series wins against the Minnesota Twins and Red Sox.
The Angels' prospects of contending certainly look better if they have the version of Canning who was poised to be a rotation
ANGELS 4, RED SOX 0
Up next: Red Sox at Angels, today, 6:38p.m., BSW building block back in 2020.
Since then, he had missed a season and a half with a stress fracture in his back, dropping on the depth chart to a spot in which the Angels simply hoped they could once again get a glimpse at that pitcher.
They finally did on Tuesday.
Canning had said after each of his first six starts since he returned that he felt everything was getting better. The words accompanied middling results, though, because in each game he'd managed to get burned by one bad inning or bad defense behind him.
This time Canning got into a minor jam in the second inning when he issued a two-out walk and gave up a hit, but he escaped with a strikeout.
Otherwise, he gave up just one hit and two walks in his other six innings. The Red Sox did not get a runner into scoring position against him.
Canning needed 41 pitches for the first two innings, but he got more efficient as the game wore on. Over his final five innings, he threw 12, 13, nine, 11 and five pitches, finishing with 91 pitches.
Canning also got some of the defensive help he'd been missing.
Left fielder Mickey Moniak made a running catch toward the line on a sharp line drive off the bat of Rafael Devers in the fourth. In the sixth, Devers hit a grounder that shortstop Zach Neto backhanded.
First baseman Jared Walsh went toward the line to make a nice pickup of an Enmanuel Valdez grounder.
Canning turned a tworun lead over to the bullpen because the only runs the Angels managed were a leadoff homer from Moniak (his third in 10 games) and a fifth-inning homer from Matt Thaiss.
Left-hander Matt Moore took care of the Red Sox in the eighth, working around a leadoff walk by inducing a double play.
Closer Carlos Estévez was warming in the bullpen when the Angels added some insurance on a Mike Trout two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth. That cushion allowed the Angels to use Jacob Webb instead for the ninth.