Rookie right at home
Canning doesn’t disappoint in his debut as the starter from Orange County shows his ‘unflappable’ stuff.
He hopped over the third base line at Angel Stadium, moments before throwing his first major league pitch for a strike down the middle of the plate, and looked like he belonged.
Griffin Canning, the Angels’ top pitching prospect and the first draft pick under general manager Billy Eppler to make his debut, was dominant at times in his first start Tuesday night. The Angels beat the Toronto Blue Jays 4-3, thanks to Brian Goodwin’s tiebreaking eighth-inning home run, but Canning was the story.
He was perfect facing the Blue Jays the first time through the batting order. He ran into some trouble and was charged with three earned runs in 41⁄3 innings, but he lived up to the hype.
“He seemed unflappable,” said manager Brad Ausmus, who watched Canning in spring training and last year in the minor leagues. “He didn’t seem intimidated. He didn’t seem out of place. He was very comfortable with the surroundings.”
Canning was all those things in front of an announced crowd of 38,797, so many of whom knew him as a child growing up in south Orange County. Even as he faltered
his second time through the Blue Jays’ batting order, Canning never seemed without poise.
He was in the middle of retiring the first 10 batters he faced, wielding a 94-mph fastball that retained its integrity as his outing went on, when his Santa Margarita High coach recalled the moment he recognized Canning’s potential.
In the summer after his freshman year, Canning and Santa Margarita played in a tournament against Joey Gallo’s Las Vegas Bishop Gorman High team. Gallo, then a rising senior on the verge of becoming the Texas Rangers’ second pick of the 2012 draft, hit a screaming line drive off Canning’s inner-half fastball with a wooden bat. The ball climbed until it left the ballpark for a home run.
Canning, who was barely 15 years old and facing a prospect who’d eventually crack the big leagues and hit 40 home runs in back-toback seasons before turning 25, didn’t flinch. He brushed it off and got back in a groove.
“He pitches big on big stages,” said Dave Bacani, who led Santa Margarita’s baseball team from 2009 to 2017. “This is obviously the biggest stage he’s pitched on and he’s doing well so far. We’re proud of him.”
So leave it to Canning to put himself in a basesloaded jam in the fourth inning of his first start and escape with little damage. He did exactly that, after Freddy Galvis knocked the first Blue Jays hit of the game to right field with one out, advanced to second on a single to left and moved to third when Canning walked Justin Smoak on five pitches.
After receiving his first mound visit from pitching coach Doug White, Canning threw a slider in the dirt for a wild pitch that allowed Galvis to score easily and give Toronto a 1-0 lead.
But the inning didn’t snowball. Canning got the final outs of the inning on a ground ball and a strikeout, his sixth of the game. Then the Angels gave him the lead in the bottom half, on Tommy La Stella’s RBI single and Jonathan Lucroy’s two-run homer.
Canning displayed all the tools the Angels praised. His fastball pushed 95 mph, his breaking balls drew nine swings and misses and received five strike calls.
He mostly limited hard contact, until he reached the fifth inning. Brandon Drury led off with a 374-foot home run into the right-field seats, trimming the Angels’ lead to 3-2. Two pitches later, Teoscar Hernandez lined a double to left.
Canning retired the next batter, then exited. Hernandez eventually scored on a ground ball induced by reliever Cam Bedrosian, and Canning wouldn’t factor into the decision.
However, the 22-year-old did almost exactly what the Angels hoped he would do.
“I just think he had that mental makeup of a professional baseball player,” said Ryan Torrey, one of Canning’s high school pitching coaches. “He showed up every single day with task in mind and just accomplished it, no matter what adversity or however hard the workout was. He just had that professional mentality that you can’t teach.”