The Angels and Braves wasted little time hammering out the first significant trade of the offseason, as the teams announced Thursday that they’ve agreed on a swap sending designated hitter Jorge Soler to Anaheim in exchange for righty Griffin Canning. There’s reportedly no money changing hands in the deal. The Angels will take on the entirety of the remaining two years and $26MM on Soler’s contract. Atlanta, meanwhile, will be on the hook for Canning’s salary in his final season of arbitration. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects a $5.1MM salary for Canning, who’ll be a free agent next winter.
Soler stood as one of the most obvious trade candidates in all of baseball this offseason, given his defensive limitations and the presence of Marcell Ozuna in Atlanta. The Braves acquired him as something of a desperation move at the deadline, needing help for an injury-ravaged lineup. The plan always seemed to be stomaching Soler in the outfield for a couple of months and pursuing a trade in the offseason (hence Soler ranking prominently on our list of the top 35 trade candidates of the 2024-25 offseason).
The 32-year-old Soler (33 in February) will add a thunderous bat and defensively limited skill set to the Angels’ roster. He inked a three-year, $42MM deal with the Giants last winter on the heels of a 36-homer campaign in Miami and has now been traded twice in the first year of the contract. That isn’t for lack of production, however. To the contrary, Soler enjoyed a solid season at the plate, slashing .241/.338/.442 in 142 games. He was particularly productive from June onward, catching fire with a .263/.366/.489 batting line and clubbing 15 of his 21 homers in that span of 386 plate appearances.
Soler simply wasn’t a good long-term fit on Atlanta’s roster with Ozuna a lock to be retained on a $16MM club option. Both players offer huge power but bottom-of-the-scale defense in the outfield corners. The Braves, as a luxury tax payor, would’ve been on the hook for overage penalties in addition to the $13MM annually owed to Soler.
With the Angels, it’s a more straightforward match. He’ll slot in as the everyday designated hitter on a Halos club that used journeyman Willie Calhoun as its primary option at the DH position in 2024. Eighteen players saw time at DH for the Angels last year, and their collective output (.222/.299/.328) was the fifth-worst in the sport, by measure of wRC+ (80). Even if Soler doesn’t bounce all the way back to his standout 2023 production, his 2024 output represents a monumental upgrade over what the Angels received out of last year’s committee approach to the DH spot in their lineup.
Soler is now one of five Angels under a guaranteed contract for the 2025 season, joining Mike Trout, Anthony Rendon, Tyler Anderson and Robert Stephenson. Add in an arbitration class that could cost upwards of $31-32MM before any potential non-tenders (via Swartz’s previously referenced projections), and the Halos are looking at a projected payroll around $168MM (via RosterResource) with the entire offseason ahead of them. They’re presently about $58MM beneath the first luxury tax threshold.
For the Braves, the trade subtracts an onerous contract while adding another competitor to their rotation competition behind Chris Sale, Reynaldo Lopez, Spencer Schwellenbach (and, once healthy, Spencer Strider). Canning, a former second-round pick and top prospect, has shown promise with the Angels at times — 2020 and 2023, in particular — but has yet to solidify himself as a viable big leagues starter. He’s coming off a season that saw him soak up a career-high 171 2/3 innings but do so with a lackluster 5.19 earned run average. His 17.6% strikeout rate, 8.9% walk rate, 40.7% ground-ball rate and 1.63 HR/9 mark are all worse than the league average.
As recently as ’23, however, Canning logged 127 innings with a 4.32 ERA and much more promising strikeout and walk rates of 25.9% and 6.7%, respectively. A dip in both command and fastball velocity (94.7 mph in 2023, 93.4 mph in 2024) contributed to a downturn on the mound. That said, Canning entered the 2024 season with career-long strikeout and walk rates that were better than league average and a decent bit of post-hype prospect pedigree. He won’t be guaranteed a rotation spot in Atlanta, but if he’s tendered a contract — not a sure thing — he’d compete with AJ Smith-Shawver, Ian Anderson, Bryce Elder and Hurston Waldrep for a spot at the back of the starting staff.
Canning has more than five years of service time and thus cannot be optioned to the minors without his consent. That lack of options leaves open the possibility that the Braves could attempt to sign him to a one-year deal that checks in well shy of his projected arbitration salary and, if unsuccessful, decline to tender him a contract. That’d render the Soler trade a straight-up salary dump, but that’s still not an entirely bad outcome for the Braves. If Canning is indeed tendered a contract, he could also be used as a swingman or long reliever.
The Braves paid the luxury tax in both 2023 and 2024. They’re overwhelmingly likely to do so again in 2025, based on the state of their books. Paying Soler $13MM would’ve come with at least a 50% luxury tax — possibly more, depending on the extent of their remaining offseason spending. For a club with holes to fill in the rotation and quite likely at shortstop, that was an untenable setup. In effect, Atlanta is buying low on a rotation flier and creating greater financial flexibility to address other offseason needs. The Angels, meanwhile, move a potential fifth starter/non-tender candidate to provide a substantial upgrade to a lackluster offense. The Angels’ roster is still littered with holes, so this should be just the first of many additions if the team is intent on trying to compete next season. It’s a fine start as long as it’s merely the first domino in a broader sequence.
Mike Rodriguez first reported Soler was being traded to the Angels. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that Canning was headed back to Atlanta. David O’Brien of The Athletic reported that no money was changing hands in the trade.
