Griffin Canning pitches 7 dominant innings to lead Angels to 2nd straight series victory

ANAHEIM — The last time Griffin Canning recorded at least 21 outs in a baseball game, it was played in a stadium with photos of the players’ family members occupying seats and fake crowd noise pumped in over the ballpark speakers.

Canning worked seven innings in the Angels’ 4-0 victory over the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday night, his longest outing since he went eight innings once during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

Canning helped lift the Angels (27-23) to their third straight victory, and their fifth in the past six games. By taking the first two of this series against Boston, the Angels have now won back-to-back series for the first time since they did so last month against the Kansas City Royals and Oakland A’s. The Angels hadn’t won any series against teams with winning records before these two series wins against the Minnesota Twins and Red Sox.

The Angels’ prospects of contending certainly look better if they have the version of Canning who was poised to be a rotation building block back in 2020, which in many ways seems like a lifetime ago.

Since then, the former UCLA and Santa Margarita High star had missed a season and a half with a stress fracture in his back, leaving the Angels and their fans to wonder if they’d ever see that pitcher again.

“I think the injuries and stuff have made me a better person and a better player,” Canning said. “So I’m grateful that I went through that and got to this place, but it doesn’t stop here. Just get back to work tomorrow.”

Canning’s even-keel attitude has persisted throughout his comeback season. After each of his first six starts, he said everything was getting better and he was simply focused on the “process” over the results, which were middling. In each game he had been burned by one bad inning or even some bad defense behind him, resulting in him bringing a 6.14 ERA to the mound on Tuesday.

After knocking that down to 4.95, Canning shrugged.

“Honestly I think they were just hitting it at some guys this time,” Canning said. “The process has been the same. That’s why it’s process over results. You don’t live and die with results.”

There was at least one significant difference in Canning’s process this time. He threw his curveball 19% of the time on Tuesday, which was about twice as much as he’d used it previously this season. Canning said it was an adjustment he made because the Red Sox lineup was stacked his seven lefties.

Canning got into a minor jam in the second inning when he issued a two-out walk and gave up a hit, but he escaped with a strikeout. Otherwise, he gave up just one hit and two walks in his other six innings. The Red Sox did not get a runner into scoring position against him.

Canning needed 41 pitches for the first two innings, but he got more efficient as the game wore on. Over his final five innings, he threw 12, 13, nine, 11 and five pitches, finishing with 91 pitches.

“As the game went on, you saw his confidence,” Manager Phil Nevin said. “You saw it in his face every time he came off the mound.”

Canning also got some of the defensive help he’d been missing.

Left fielder Mickey Moniak made a running catch toward the line on a sharp line drive off the bat of Rafael Devers in the fourth. In the sixth, Devers hit a grounder that shortstop Zach Neto backhanded. First baseman Jared Walsh went toward the line to make a nice pickup of an Enmanuel Valdez grounder in the fifth.

Canning turned a two-run lead over to the bullpen because the only runs the Angels managed were a leadoff homer from Moniak (his third in 10 games) and a fifth-inning homer from Matt Thaiss.

Left-hander Matt Moore took care of the Red Sox in the eighth, working around a leadoff walk by inducing a double play.

Closer Carlos Estévez was warming in the bottom of the eighth when the Angels added some insurance on a Mike Trout two-run homer, one that also tied him with Joe DiMaggio on the all-time list with 361 homers.

“It means a lot,” Trout said. “Just to be there with the greats. It’s really special. Especially another center fielder.”

Trout’s homer gave the Angels enough cushion that Estévez, who had pitched three of the previous five days, could get the night off. Instead, Jacob Webb worked a perfect ninth to lock up the victory for Canning.

“I think tonight’s a big stepping stone for him,” Nevin said. “It’s finally like ‘OK, here I am. I’m back.’ It’s been two years and you finally get a good one under your belt and you can run with it.”

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