With 'conviction,' Canning caps career start

After struggling over his last three starts, Griffin Canning turned it around in a big way with one of the best outings of his career against the Mariners on Sunday.

The right-hander gave up one run on four hits over a career-high eight innings, but it wasn’t enough, with the offense struggling in a 2-1 loss in 10 innings at Angel Stadium. It dropped the Angels to 1-5 in extra-innings games this season.

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“He had everything going on. He had a lot of confidence,” Angels manager Joe Maddon said. “Great delivery. Very, very good stuff. Very happy for him. That's what he's capable of doing more consistently."

After posting a 3.14 ERA through his first three starts of the season, Canning scuffled over his next three outings with a 6.75 ERA. But Canning was much sharper this time out and made it past seven innings for the first time in 24 career starts. Canning lowered his ERA to 4.04 and credited a shift in mentality for his success, which caused him to throw first-pitch strikes to 18 of the 26 batters he faced.

“Just being convicted, not worrying about making the perfect pitch,” Canning said. “Just attacking them. I think the big word for me is 'conviction.'”

Canning cruised early and didn’t give up a hit until the fifth inning on a one-out single from Jose Marmolejos, and Canning retired the next two batters to get out of the inning unscathed.

His lone mistake came in the seventh, when he surrendered a solo shot to Kyle Lewis with one out. Canning left an 0-1 fastball over the plate and Lewis didn't miss it for his eighth homer of the season. It was also the seventh homer allowed by Canning in seven starts.

“I was trying to go up and in, and I just pulled it across over the middle," Canning said. "Obviously, with the year that Kyle Lewis is having, he's gonna swing and he's going to hit it well."

Canning otherwise had good command, striking out eight and walking just one. Canning kept the Mariners off-balance despite throwing his fastball a bit more than usual. Of his 94 pitches, 44 were fastballs while his slider was his best secondary pitch. He got five swings and misses with the fastball and three each with the slider, changeup and curveball. But he also got five called strikes with the slider as well.

"A focus going into my last couple outings has just been kind of pitching with my fastball more," Canning said. "And then today, I had kind of like a little backdoor slider-cutter. That worked really well for me last year but I just for whatever reason haven't thrown it too much this year. That really helped me get ahead of guys and it was good for this lineup, especially those lefties they have in the lineup."

Maddon said he could tell that Canning also had his good stuff early and felt like Canning's fastball was better than it had been in previous outings. Canning had a platelet-rich plasma injection in his throwing elbow in March and his average fastball velocity is a bit down from last year. But he did touch 95 mph with his four-seamer on Sunday and averaged 93 mph. It helped him to perhaps his best career outing and Maddon believes he can build on it.

“When we took him out after eight, I could see it in his face, there was a level of confidence and self-satisfaction I haven’t seen yet,” Maddon said. “He can build off this. This is the kind of game he’s capable of having on a consistent basis, and that’s what we need to be a winning team, a first-[place] team.”