Braves roster outcast is a candidate to be the NY Mets' next Griffin Canning

Griffin Canning unknowingly grabbed a life preserver before the New York Mets ship went down in 2025. A season-ending injury in his start against the Atlanta Braves on June 26 had him leaving the Mets with a 3.77 ERA in 16 starts. The added irony of the injury is the Braves employed Canning briefly in the 2024-2025 offseason after acquiring him in a trade with the Los Angeles Angels for Jorge Soler. He’d end up non-tendered weeks later.

It was, by all accounts, a successful albeit shortened stint with the Mets. Many fans weren’t thrilled to see the Mets hand a roster spot to a player with a lifetime 4.78 ERA heading into 2025. The risk was trending the right way until the Achilles injury.

The Braves made some notable changes with their roster recently. Notably, Alexis Diaz and Jarred Kelenic are free agents. So, too, is a guy from the Braves roster who could be a candidate to piece together something similar to what Canning offered in 2025.

Dane Dunning is a free agent candidate to be next year’s Griffin Canning

Dane Dunning turns 31 in December and things haven’t gone quite the way the former first-round draft pick wanted. A player who hasn’t had much big league success thus far, he enters free agency with a lifetime 4.44 ERA. He has a decent walk rate of 3.3 BB/9 combined with 8.2 K/9. Just 20.2 innings all in relief for the Braves and Texas Rangers prior to heading to Georgia, he’s coming off a miserable year which saw him get hammered. His 6.97 ERA was enough for Atlanta to bail. In 10 innings with them, he allowed 12 earned runs.

A staple of David Stearns’ way of thinking has the current President of Baseball Operations in Queens taking gambles on starting pitchers. We saw it pay off effectively for the 2024 season. The exact opposite happened in 2025 every which way we looked with few exceptions. Canning was one of them.

Dunning doesn’t deserve a hefty contract. In fact, it wouldn’t be so outrageous for him to settle on a minor league deal. In which case, there’s no excuse not to completely bypass him. On a major league deal, something incredibly cheap with the idea of Dunning competing for a rotation spot in camp with the backup plan to use him as a long man in relief is the appropriate way to handle him. There’s no reason to believe the Mets won’t be looking for experienced rotation depth, even with guys who are coming off of bad years.

The Mets are already without Frankie Montas and Tylor Megill for next year. Questions about the health of Kodai Senga (as well as the effectiveness) along with Sean Manaea fuels their need for a more frontline starter. Dunning seems more unrelated to those veterans. Viewing him as more of a stop gap between a promotion for a pitcher like Brandon Sproat (if he doesn’t make the team) or Jonah Tong (he shouldn’t make the team) could allow the Mets to have a sixth starter on the roster who gets his spot starts as needed while working regularly out of the bullpen.

Just because certain things didn’t work well for the Mets in 2025 doesn’t mean they’ll stop doing them moving forward. It is smart to have guys capable of going multiple innings in your bullpen.

If the pitching lab is as much of a miracle worker as the franchise wants us to believe, Dunning is someone to throw in there in the spring.