Braves Trade Jorge Soler to Angels for Griffin Canning
Is this a pure salary dump, or do they think they can fix Canning?
The Atlanta Braves obviously thought that Jorge Soler’s defensive issues were too severe to let him spend a year in Truist Park’s expansive left field.
Just months after re-acquiring the slugger at the trade deadline, Atlanta dealt the 32 year old Soler to the Los Angeles Angels just hours after the offseason officially started, receiving RHP Griffin Canning in return. Per multiple reports, there is no money changing hands, so Soler’s $16M is off the books for the next two seasons.
The Soler side of this is easy to understand - with Marcell Ozuna’s club option for 2025 being picked up and Ronald Acuña Jr. potentially needing some time at designated hitter as he works back from a torn ACL, there wasn’t room for a third designated hitter on the roster.
The Angels swooped in, acquiring a high-upside slugger that should work out in their park1 and can give them the power threat that Anthony Rendon never was and Mike Ttrout hasn’t been healthy enough to provide in recent years.
But why would the Braves make this trade? Why Canning, who has a career ERA of 4.78 and is projected to cost just over $5.1M in arbitration (per MLB Trade Rumors)?
There’s a few different ways this could go.
Atlanta might not be planning on keeping Canning
Option one is that the Braves don’t see Canning sticking around.
This is what happened last offseason. Entering the Winter Meetings, Atlanta started a flurry of trades, acquiring bad contracts to get Jarred Kelenic from the Seattle Mariners and then spinning those players off on other teams. Excluding David Fletcher, who is still with the organization, here’s the players that technically were part of the team but weren’t around long enough to even get a jersey number:
RP Jackson Kowar - acquired from Royals, flipped to Mariners2
1B Evan White - acquired from Mariners, flipped to Angels
SP Marco Gonzalez - acquired from Mariners, flipped to Pirates
C Max Stassi - acquired from Angels, flipped to White Sox
1B Matt Carpenter - acquired from Padres, released
Canning might be the next member of that illustrious group of legends, but it’s possible the Braves have other ideas for the righthander.
Can the Braves fix Canning?
Let’s establish what we’re dealing up front: This is an UGLY Statcast page.
Canning’s four-seam fastball averages just 93.4 mph and gets absolutely LIT up - opposing hitters batted .251 with a .529 slugging off of it this season.3
And the reason for the struggles of his heater? It’s a pure ‘dead-zone’ fastball.
Here’s a pretty plot to demonstrate:
The red circle is the actual movement of the fastball, while the concentric blue circles are what hitters would naturally expect the fastball to do, given the arm angle.
Remember, pitching is all about the hitter not being comfortable with how your pitches move, how hard you’re throwing them, or the order you throw them (‘sequencing’).
Canning doesn’t get any of that. His fastball has below-average velocity and moves exactly how a professional hitter thinks it’s going to move, with below-average vertical and horizontal break that lines up with his arm angle pretty well.
Is that fixable? I’m not sure. The cure is typically to either add more vert or more sink/run, but he’s probably tried that. Maybe it’s moving to a cutter as a primary pitch? The slider doesn’t actually break that much so it’s essentially working as a slow fastball.4 Maybe a cutter can get a little more glove-side run, just to keep hitters honest.
Side note: I like the curveball and the changeup, which was surprisingly effective for him this season. Curveball works well when he can keep it down below the zone, in the shadow/chase area.
But back to the fastball: The Braves are notorious for having guys throw less fastballs than other teams - think of Pierce Johnson and Charlie Morton spamming curveballs to everyone - but I’m not sure what the play is here.
Canning was better with the heater last season - he averaged almost 95 on the fastball and, while he didn’t blow anyone away with his statistics (a 4.32 ERA), he had his moments: a 3.41 ERA across five June starts, for instance.
What can we learn from his successes?
The single best month of Canning’s 2024 season came in May, where he went 1-1 across five starts with a 2.60 ERA. What went right there? Maybe it’s something we can tap into for next season.
Less fastballs (-8% usage), more curveballs (+2%) and sliders (+3%). Got it.
The solution here is almost entirely in the fastball - fix the dead zone problem and you just might fix Griffin Canning.
Does Atlanta try it? They have until November 22nd at 7PM ET, the non-tender deadline, to decide.
Soler has 180 career homers, but it’d be 192 if he played all his games in Angels Stadium.
Hilariously sad footnote here: Both Kowar and the prospect traded to Seattle in the deal, Cole Phillips, needed Tommy John surgery after the trade and have yet to throw a single competitive pitch for Seattle.
The Braves record-setting offense of 2023 hit .276 with a .501 slugging…so he’s a few strikeouts away from every opposing offense looking like the 2023 Braves when he throws them fastballs. Less than ideal.
And getting hit like one, too - .284 BA allowed in 2024
Say they’re going to flip him (likely in my opinion, he’s not my first, second, or third pick to replace Fried); who do you think they could be trying to get using him as a bargaining tool? Another pitcher? Shortstop?