Sink or swim, NY Mets don’t need to provide Griffin Canning with a life raft this season

An aspect of David Stearns’ style of management we all came to appreciate last year was unselfishly he operated with the majority of players. You don’t perform for the New York Mets, you hand in your uniform.

It was a nice change from the previous regime of Billy Eppler who practically strapped us into that chair from A Clockwork Orange with our eyelids pulled up, forcing us to watch another game with Daniel Vogelbach. Darin Ruf, unbelievably, came within days of making the 2023 Opening Day roster. Only a terrible spring training helped bump him into oblivion.

General Managers having a fondness for certain players, usually the ones they had a hand in adding, isn’t completely unusual. Stearns didn’t have much attachment. He’d be great for fostering dogs for a couple of weeks. We’ll see if this continues, in particular with one of his more debatable additions, Griffin Canning.

Griffin Canning shouldn’t get a life raft from the Mets in 2025 if things aren’t working out

Signed for $4.25 million, Canning is a youngish arm first thought of as only a contender for the rotation with a backup plan of throwing him into a relief role to begin the season. Alas, spring training injuries have moved him up the depth chart and will guarantee him a rotation spot to begin the year.

Canning has a large enough sample to leave us scratching our eyes as to why the Mets preferred him over others. A lifetime 4.78 ERA including a 5.19 ERA last year in his largest sample size of all, Canning is not a reclamation project like so many others who’ve joined the Mets since Stearns took over. He’s simply a project.

The money doesn’t seem to matter much here and we should consider him to be this year’s Shintaro Fujinami. A player the Mets signed last year for $3.35 million, chalk the slight increase handed to Canning as the cost of inflation and a little more proven stability at the major league level. Fujinami never made it above Triple-A for the Mets in 2024. He was never forced onto the roster even late in the season when he was pitching well.

Canning should follow the path of another bust from last year, Adrian Houser. Houser was provided with a life raft, but the second Rose DeWitt Butaker fell into the water, Jack Dawson pushed him aside. Too bad Jack didn't have any room for himself.

Sink because you aren’t getting the job done or keep swimming and be one of those guys we’ll be thankful management saw something in. It's a mentality from last year to keep in 2025.

Unafraid to take some risks, demote players as needed, or rid the team of the existence even if it means dead weight on the payroll, Canning is a pawn the Mets accept might get gobbled up by a rook. If he can somehow make it across the board or maybe cleverly take out a knight (that’s the one that looks like a horsey!), we’ll take it. A promising appearance on Monday that included 5 strikeouts in 3.2 innings of work has him moving well ahead of Paul Blackburn in the eyes of fans and an early lead for when the walking wounded return from the IL. Hopefully, we have more of the same when games actually count.