Ready for the Offseason? Too Bad! Angels, Braves Swap Canning for Soler

Did you enjoy that thrilling World Series clincher Wednesday night? Still glowing from Walker Buehler stomping in from the bullpen like Ricky Vaughn? Still got your protractor and T-square on your desk as you try to figure out if Gerrit Cole could’ve beaten Mookie Betts to first base with two outs in the fifth? I know I need a moment to decompress from all the excitement.

You know who doesn’t? Alex Anthopoulos and Perry Minasian, who couldn’t wait 24 hours to execute the first trade of the offseason. And this wasn’t some bit of bookkeeping minutiae, a my-garbage-for-your-trash trade to clear a 40-man roster spot before the Rule 5 draft protection deadline. This was a trade of big leaguers, and fairly noteworthy ones at that: The Braves are sending outfielder Jorge Soler to the Angels in exchange for right-hander Griffin Canning.

Most ballplayers are lucky to carve out one niche in the major leagues. The 32-year-old Soler, who’s about to enter his 12th season in the majors, has two. First, Soler can be a complementary player on a championship-caliber team. Soler has gobs of power and absolutely crushes left-handed pitching (151 wRC+ against lefties in 2024, 132 for his career). He’s won two rings in his career because for a team with more good position players than it can use — like the 2016 Cubs or 2021 Braves — having a hitter like that on the bench is like having a get-out-of-lefty-reliever-free card.

And yet, that role does Soler a bit of a disservice, because he’s better than a platoon bench bat. I’m not saying that Soler can anchor a championship lineup or anything, but while he strikes out a lot and has a big platoon split and does not play good defense, he’ll take a walk (career BB% of 10.7) and is passable against same-handed pitching (108 wRC+ against righties this past season, 106 for his career).

In fact, Soler has been good enough against righties to develop that second niche. Twice in his career he’s been a supporting player on a World Series-winning team. In both cases, a sub-.500 club with limited resources looked at Soler’s label, read the phrase “Contains cleanup hitter-like substance,” and went out of its way to acquire him. (The Cubs signed him as an amateur free agent in 2012, during the depths of their rebuild, while Atlanta traded for him ahead of the 2021 deadline as it remade its outfield on the fly.)

And while he’s been inconsistent historically as an everyday player, Soler has had some very, very good seasons while anchoring a bad lineup. In 2019, he led the American league with 48 home runs while playing for the Royals. Overall that year, he hit .265/.354/.569, a wRC+ of 136, and put up 3.5 WAR despite giving back 17 runs of value on defense. In 2023, Soler hit .250/.341/.512, for a 125 wRC+, and socked 36 dingers. Had he played more than 137 games, Soler might’ve posted a second 40-homer season.

Those are good seasons by most people’s standards! And while Soler wasn’t quite as good in 2024, he still hit .241/.338/.442, which worked out to a 119 wRC+. It was only in February that the Giants lavished a three-year, $42 million contract on Soler. Having missed out on Aaron Judge — the Cadillac of right-handed power hitters — one offseason before, they found a Chevy in their budget.

But not even nine months into that contract, Soler is already on his third team. At the deadline, San Francisco salary dumped Soler and Luke Jackson to the Braves, who were drowning in a flood of injuries and figured there were worse ideas than getting the band back together from 2021. And now, on to Anaheim.

On one hand, Soler is a good fit for an Angels team that’s going to need a lot of power on account of having Nolan Schanuel at one infield corner and Anthony Rendon (if only in body, and even then not all the time) at the other. The 2017 Royals, 2022 Marlins, and 2024 Giants were all like the current Angels, in that they wanted to win, but insisted on being weird about it in some respect — payroll, front office structure, owner interference, that sort of thing. The Angels just picked up a former AL home run champion with plenty of tread on his tires basically for the cost of assuming his contract. A contract that many players of Soler’s stature might think twice about signing with such a dysfunctional organization.

On the other hand, how is Soler, who ought to be a full-time DH, going to fit in with a team that ought to be using that spot to reduce the wear on Rendon and Mike Trout? A team that, aging superstars aside, already has plenty of corner outfielders?

No idea. Someone will get hurt, I guess. It’ll make a interesting puzzle for Ron Washington to solve.

So what of the other player in this deal?

Canning is a former top prospect who’s fallen on hard times of late. He predates the Angels’ recent strategy of drafting fast-to-the-majors college guys and rushing them up the ladder before their meager player development program can mess them up, but he was that kind of pitcher.

Canning’s been about a league-average pitcher for most of his career; he even won a Gold Glove in 2020. At least that was the case when he was healthy. He suffered a stress fracture in his back in 2021 and didn’t appear in another game for nearly two calendar years. In 2023 he battled various strains and tightnesses, but he was healthy for all of 2024.

Which didn’t work out that well for him. Between 2023 and 2024, Canning lost more than a mile per hour off his four-seamer and two inches of vertical break off his slider, a pitch that’s movement profile is almost completely up-and-down to begin with. Canning posted a 5.19 ERA and a 5.26 FIP, and led the American League by surrendering 99 earned runs.

Take one down, pass it around.

Canning is an obvious change-of-scenery candidate, especially because he’s been looking at the same scenery his whole life. The 28-year-old was born and raised in Orange County, played his college ball at UCLA, and has (or had, now) spent his entire career in the Angels organization. Basically, he’s never left the greater Los Angeles area. Now he gets to experience a whole new world: Atlanta and Cobb County. Known for warm weather, great hiking, heinous freeway traffic, and a proud history as a Mecca of rap and hip hop. OK, maybe the scenery won’t change that much after all.

But the Braves have a good track record for pitching development. After his team turned Chris Sale back into a Cy Young contender and stretched Reynaldo López back into a starter, Anthopoulos could be forgiven for taking a pitcher reclamation heat check. Canning and Sale are about as different as two players can be, physically, but at 6-foot-2, 180 pounds, Canning does fit into the same small, athletic right-hander box from which the Braves drew Spencer Strider and Spencer Schwellenbach.

It’s not guaranteed to work. For instance, Schwellenbach has one of the easiest, lowest-effort deliveries you’re ever going to see. Canning, on the other hand, has an odd arm swing that looks a little like a Lucas Giolito-type action but in practice probably just gives the hitter a really good look at the baseball.

To whatever extent mechanics are to blame, everything Canning threw last year got torched, except his changeup, which has been a strength throughout his career. It’s a hard, high-80s offering with lots of ride. Given that it’s Canning’s best pitch and the velocity spread between fastball and change is quite small (less than five miles an hour), I’m a little confused as to why he trialed a sinker early in 2024. It seems redundant.

Maybe he should just learn a cutter instead.

From whom he learns it remains an open question. The selling point of this trade, from Atlanta’s perspective, was obviously clearing the remaining two years and $32 million on Soler’s contract. Having done that, they can now retain Canning, who’s due his final run through arbitration this offseason, or cut him loose.

Matt Swartz’s crystal ball says Canning will make about $5.1 million in arbitration this winter. Which is more than the Braves probably want to pay for a pitcher who gave up more earned runs than anyone else in the AL this past season. But this is a guy who made 31 starts in 2024 and is one year removed from posting an ERA- of 99. If the Braves don’t think they can fix him, or can’t be bothered to make the effort, he can be flipped. (Canning can also be non-tendered, but I have to imagine someone out there would want him enough to give up a minor league sleeper.)

Remember: Anthopoulos has a history of flipping recent trade acquisitions and playing tiddly-winks with non-tender candidates. A good friend of mine is a tax attorney, and he’s always telling me about some loophole or promotional offer he’s managed to find a way to arbitrage. He just wants to help me save money, but at the same time, I don’t care how many Delta Airlines miles I’m throwing away by using the wrong credit card. This is a Qdoba and I just want to exchange American currency for this burrito before I have a medical emergency brought on by low blood sugar.

This is why I’m not running the Braves. Anthopoulos will always take the free airline miles with his burrito. Now that he’s made the first significant trade of the offseason, the big question is whether he’ll involve Canning in the second.

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