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.
Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.
dying at the qdoba line lmao
Does Qdoba exist *outside* of airports? I think Seatac and John Wayne Airport are the only two places I’ve seen it.
There’s one in one of the Virginia Tech Campus Dining Halls too
If Canning can locate his fastball more adequately, he could be pretty good. But he doesn’t actually seem to have much command. Ability to throw strikes, yes. Command, no. His fastball sucks and he throws it slightly above the middle of the zone for his career, where it gets hammered to the tune of a .278 ISO. That’s terrible. 350th out of 392 pitchers who threw at least 100 fastballs and 500 pitches total this season. And he’s not any better over his career.
Then he could go the Doug Jones Tommy Kahnle route and throw only change ups.
“If Canning can locate his fastball more adequately, he could be pretty good.”
This could be said of every pitcher in AAA or AA.
Sounds like an Andrew Bailey “stop throwing your worst pitch, dummy” special
Canning seems like a shockingly valuable piece to give up in a pure salary dump. Also, as mentioned, the DH spot should ideally be used to try and keep Trout and Rendon healthy since the Angels are toast without them. Remarkably strange.
Entirely possible the Braves unlock something with Canning to make this comment look stupid, but if they don’t he’s really not valuable at all in his current form. He’s a 1 WAR swingman that’s readily available in FA for around what he’s due to make in arbitration
They had little room for Soler and other uses for the money.
I totally understand why the Braves made the deal. It’s not Soler has much value either. Just saying I don’t see this as some lopsided coup. Perhaps it turns into that as the Braves clearly know what they’re doing when it comes to pitching dev
The Angels gm said Soler will play a lot in the OF making a very bad trade even worse somehow.
trout will miss a bunch of games.
Trout is cooked. We all enjoyed his white hot peak but those days are long gone.
If one looks at from the perspective of which player will be worth more when the Angels trade him it could very easily be Soler. Fixing pitchers isn’t their strong suit
I agree with you on Trout but Rendon is horrible. Why they haven’t cut him makes no sense. I realize they are out all that money, but he’s far far below replacement value
Almost as if the Angels medical staff could be doing better with aging / highly paid position players. Who knew?
Or old guys get hurt and it’s not always someone’s fault.
It’s that sunk cost. He’s making too much money to just simply cut, so they have to play him and hope he’s healthy enough/cares enough about playing baseball to at least sort of produce.
Now that’s not true. While he can’t stay on the field and is only a shadow of his former self when he is healthy enough to play, he still posts positive WAR numbers. The only time he’s been marked below zero was his -0.1 mark in 2024 by fWAR, and even then bWAR gave him +0.6 WAR for 2024.
Can’t be said the Angels know what they are doing in the front office. On the other hand, another sneaky Braves swap that they will somehow get value out of.
In theory it’s great to add a bat like Soler’s but with Trout it’s a poor fit. Canning has some value as well. The move from Atlanta’s perspective makes a ton of sense. They already have a DH who mashes. They acquired Soler due to the injuries they had and no longer need him.
Also as an aside the Angels have two more years of Rendon who in his five years with them has maxed out at 58 games and has looked cooked over in over the last four years. They should just waive him and eat the contract and open up that roster spot. But they are the Angels so that won’t happen.
They did it to Pujols eventually but even that was because Albert balked at a backup role
Even then, Pujols was outproducing the scrubs the Angels were playing in the OF at the time while stupidly refusing to move Taylor Ward from 1B to the OF full-time.
As soon as they dump Rendon the Dodgers will pick him up; he’ll be rejuvenated for the rest of that season & will take meaningful ABs in October while the Angels, again, are like you & me, watching on TV.
Or they’ll refrain from cutting ties until September of the final year simply to avoid that potential embarrassment, which is about the only thing Anaheim does NOT need more of.
Lol. But the difference is Albert wanted to play Rendon doesn’t care as long as he gets his money.
They waived Pujols the final year; Rendon still has 2 years left.
Canning has virtually no surplus value (and could have been non tendered) so this is essentially the Angels saying Soler at 2/36 is something they really want. And I don’t get it. What a horrible roster fit and not a cheap contract either. I’d much rather spend that $36M elsewhere.
Conversely, really like this for the Braves. Rid themselves of Soler contract and get a very cheap innings eater with some potential upside.
Is Soler’s contract really that bad? It’s basically the same as Ozuna’s. It’s certainly tradeable midseason even if he’s mediocre for half a season. The question is whether he’s worth more than Canning would be
I don’t think Soler is even close to being comparable to Ozuna. Ozuna has been worth 7.9 WAR the last two years vs 2.9 for Soler. Soler has averaged 1.1 WAR over the last 3 years and he’s going into his age 33 season. I think 2/36 for this profile is bad and could be much better spent elsewhere. It’s made even worse considering how poor the roster fit is on the Angels.
That’s true. I was fooled by the similarity in career wRC+ and Soler’s hulking physique.
It’s not bad. Soler is streaky but he averages out to be a decent hitter, even at DH. It’s just that the Angels only have one DH spot.
Because the signing bonus, Soler is actually 2/26
I know you all think Trout would play a lot of DH without Soler in the way, but has that ever been confirmed to have been the Angels’ original plan? They may have planned all along to just continue playing Trout in the OF (if not necessarily CF) with an occasional half rest day at DH as long as he’s healthy and not playing through a minor injury.
The same goes for Rendon. While whatever they get from him may be considered just a bonus at this point, as long as he’s not playing through an injury, they may feel they should just mostly play him at 3B while they can.
Even if the Braves decide that they want to eat $5M to keep Canning in Gwinnet for the year to work on stuff and be a depth starter, that’s STILL a financial improvement over paying $32M for Soler.
Yes but the question is whether Canning can be fixed. The plus change up indicates that he can
They could waive him tomorrow and still be ahead.
And lets not forget that last offseason guys like Lance Lynn and Paxton were getting 11-13M. Huge win for the Braves.
Guys like Clevinger/Lorenzen were getting 3-4.5M though. That’s a better comp
It’s hard or maybe even a little foolish to talk about trends with a sample of one, but I wonder if this portends a players market in free agency?
I was sure the Braves were going to have to eat money to rid themselves of a just-okay player on a 2/$32m deal that everyone knew they had to deal.
The more likely takeaway is the Angels be Angel-ing, but we will see.
The Angels are aggressive at filling needs with guys in this price range. But I think the story is probably that Soler is considered good enough for the contract.
Gary Matthews Jr looks up from his newspaper and looks around
This trade gives the Braves flexibility in a variety of ways. And flexibility is very valuable at the beginning of the offseason. The 26M they save by trading away Soler and his contract can be used for improvement at a variety of other positions – LF, SS, bench, bullpen, rotation. If the Braves believe that they can help Canning be a decent back of the rotation pitcher again, then spending $5M on him makes sense. If not, they can non-tender him for less than 1M. Or maybe some other time desperate for pitching actually wants Canning and will give up a useful asset. This 100%v a great trade for the Braves, and at a great time.
For the Angels, this trade has Arte Moreno written all over it. Acquire an aging bat with a good/great past and let go of a pitcher they failed to develop. How many times have we seen variations of this scenario in Moreno’s past?
Angels just traded for Scott Kingery too 😜
Well, they’ve definitely got a type.
And claimed Ryan Noda. These all seem like moves with a purpose
Alright, I’ll bite. What purpose?
Look, you laugh now, but you won’t be laughing at Scott Kingery, 2025 ALCS MVP.
Obviously not for the Angels, but after he’s been DFA’d in May and picked up by, say, the Guardians.
Players with crappy 2024 but some sort of hitting ability at some point in the past that could theoretically come out.
If there’s any team that’s sure to unlock that potential, it’s the Angels!!
Why does Hunter Feduccia’s defense project so poorly? Was looking at him after Dodgers retaining Barnes but despite a 55 fielding grade he’s somehow at -11 in 36 games.
You are right that Soler is a “supporting role” caliber player for a WS team, but I must point out that Soler was actually much more than this for the Braves in 2021. The dude was World Series MVP.