Griffin Canning Adjusts and Battles to Earn Win

Baseball is often a game of adjustments, and in his last two starts, Griffin Canning has made all the right moves.

“You go in with a game plan, but you have to adjust because teams will adjust to you,” manager Carlos Mendoza said Tuesday after Canning upped his record to 3-1 with five innings of one-run ball in a 5-1 victory over the Phillies at Citi Field.

When Canning beat the Cardinals last Thursday, Mendoza said “he went to his fastball when he recognized that they were sitting on his secondary pitches.” On Tuesday, Canning adjusted by getting his pitches down after leaving too many up in the strike zone in the first inning.

“He found a way,” Mendoza said. “Battled. Never panicked when they created traffic. They put together some good at-bats and he was still able to make pitches.”

Canning gave up seven hits, struck out five and walked one. On his 84th and final pitch, he struck out Nick Castellanos swinging with runners on second and third to end the top of the fifth inning with the Mets leading 2-1.

“Getting Castellanos there was huge,” Mendoza said. “Getting ahead and then executing the slider for the strikeout.”

Mendoza had to make an adjustment of his own during spring training when a trio of injuries forced him to alter his plans for the rotation. He said he was confident the replacements would perform.

“We knew we were good,” Mendoza said. “And coming into camp we kept talking about our depth. And even when (Sean) Manaea went down, when (Frankie) Montas went down, we felt good with what we had. And (Paul) Blackburn goes down and we still feeling pretty good about it. Yeah, we probably one injury away from reaching here.”

Canning, 28, who pitched to a 5.19 ERA for the Angels last year and led the American League in earned runs allowed, has been the biggest surprise of a surprisingly dominant starting staff, which leads MLB in team ERA at 2.29.

“It’s been fun,” Canning said after lowering his ERA to 3.12. “I think we all kind of feed off each other. We’re all having fun in the dugout, I mean in between starts, talking with each other, learning from each other. I mean it’s awesome being with these guys.

“You got to give credit to (Hayden) Senger and Luis (Torrens) back there too, just being able to kinda guide us through the game, but I think there’s a lot of commonalities with pitch grips and stuff like that that we’re able to kind of talk through and certain feels.”

“Guys are going out there,” Mendoza said, “taking the ball, giving us a chance to win baseball games, attacking the strike zone and it’s fun.”

Pitching at Citi Field, where 36,468 fans watched the Mets improve to 11-1 at home, has been a blast, too.

“It was a lot of fun,” Canning said of the atmosphere. “It’s been so cool to pitch here. The fans are in it. They understand kinda the big moments of the game. It’s been really really fun to pitch here.”

The post Griffin Canning Adjusts and Battles to Earn Win appeared first on Metsmerized Online.