What Mets Griffin Canning learned from Shohei Ohtani as Angels teammates

Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Mike Puma about the inside buzz on the Mets.Shohei Ohtani was scheduled to face batters Saturday for the first time since he underwent a second Tommy John surgery in September 2023, but the late ending of Friday’s extra-inning win by the Dodgers at Citi Field forced the Dodgers to push it back to Sunday.It’s not often a pitcher’s return is anticipated as much as this one, but there’s only one Ohtani.Griffin Canning has seen Ohtani up close for longer than most.Canning was drafted by the Angels out of UCLA in the second round in July 2017.Five months later, the Angels won the Ohtani sweepstakes.And by the time Canning made his MLB debut in 2019, Ohtani was already meeting the extraordinarily high expectations he arrived with on both sides of the ball.“I remember being in the minors when we signed him and how exciting it was,’’ Canning said before the Mets faced the Dodgers on Saturday in Queens.

“He’s definitely lived up to the hype.”It took some time, as Canning recalled seeing Ohtani in spring training in 2018 and Ohtani hadn’t yet turned the baseball world on its head.“I think Japanese players view spring training a little differently,” Canning said of Ohtani’s famously poor performance during the Cactus League in Arizona that spring.“He came over here and wasn’t throwing as hard as before.

And hitting is always an adjustment and he was doing stuff with his leg kick.”Those changes didn’t take long to kick in, as Ohtani excelled both at the plate and on the mound before being shut down in September with an ulnar collateral ligament injury that led to his first Tommy John surgery.He returned to the mound in 2020, won the American League MVP with the Angels in 2021 and ’23, and finished fourth in the AL Cy Young Award voting in 2022.Ohtani signed with the Dodgers for 10 years and $700 million prior to the 2024 season and then won his f...