The Padres Add Griffin Canning To Their Rotation

February 14, 2026

It was reported Saturday morning that the San Diego Padres had signed right-hander Griffin Canning to a major league contract. He will be added to the Padres rotation mix of Michael King, Nick Pivetta, Joe Musgrove, Randy Vasquez, and JP Sears.

Yu Darvish is likely to miss the entire 2026 campaign after undergoing UCL surgery in October of last year. He had an internal brace put on his right elbow.

San Diego does have a couple minor league rotation options, but they likely won’t be needed right now. They added veteran starters Triston McKenzie and Marco Gonzales on minor league deals over the winter.

Canning’s 2025 campaign was cut short on June 27, due to a left achilles rupture. He is questionable for Opening Day, but will likely make his Padre debut early in the season.

Canning’s Major League Recap

Canning has pitched six seasons in the majors, five of them being with the Los Angeles Angels. His tenure with the Angels ended on October 31, 2024 when they traded him to Atlanta straight-up for Jorge Soler. Atlanta then non-tendered Canning later in the winter and he went on to sign a one-year deal with the Mets.

Across Canning’s six-season tenure with the Angels, he only pitched in five of them. He missed the entire 2022 season due to a lower back stress fracture. During the five he did pitch, he appeared in 99 games making 94 starts. He logged 508 innings while pitching to a 4.78 ERA and a 1.33 WHIP.

He definitely ran into a lot of traffic on the basepaths. Across five Angel seasons, he allowed 8.8 H/9, 1.6 HR/9, and 3.2 BB/9.  The walk rate wasn’t horrible, but not good. His 1.6 homers per nine was the most concerning, as he was constantly giving up hard-contact.

Canning’s 2025 campaign with the Mets looked promising as he got better results. He made 16 starts with New York and totalled 76.1 innings. He posted a career best 3.77 ERA with a 1.38 WHIP. He gave up the fewest home runs of his career at 0.9 homers per nine. He also raised his strikeout rate from 6.8/K9 in 2024 to 8.3/K9 in 2025. 

Even though these better results were only from 76.1 innings of work, Canning has only logged 125 or more innings in two of his six seasons.

Digging Deeper

Canning has always featured a core four-pitch mix consisting of a four-seam fastball, slider, curveball, and a changeup. He did add a cutter in 2020 that he used 20% of the time, but it didn’t return until 2025 where he threw only 4%.

Even since pitching run value was first tracked in 2019, his changeup has been his best pitch followed by his slider. His four-seam fastball is not a good pitch, and has never been a positive pitch for Canning. His curveball had a positive run value of three in 2019 and two in 2025, but has otherwise been below average. His stuff isn’t great in general as he has a career 91 stuff+ grade according to FanGraphs.

Canning’s metrics have never blown anyone away. When looking at his Baseball Savant page, most years you’ll see a lot of grey and blue which is not good. His offspeed pitches have always been his strength, and his offspeed run value has ranked at least in the 75th percentile his whole career. His whiff and chase percentages have sat around league average.