Mets' Mark Canha isn't afraid to ask for what he needs
Mark Canha of the New York Mets warms up before the start of a spring game against the St. Louis Cardinals. Credit: Getty Images/Eric Espada
PHILADELPHIA — In the batting cage, in the training room, in the office of a Vero Beach, Florida, gastroenterologist, Mark Canha is comfortable asking for what he needs — and it is working for him.
He leads the Mets with a .381 average (and is third with an .881 OPS), a legitimate offensive threat in the bottom-third of the lineup, a testament to their quantity of quality hitters. Those marks over the team’s first road trip served as his soft introduction, ahead of the home opener Friday afternoon against the Diamondbacks, to a new team and a new fan base in baseball’s biggest market, among the greatest contrasts to the previous chapter of his career.
After an offseason in which the Mets acquired a gaggle of former All-Stars — Max Scherzer, Chris Bassitt, Starling Marte, Eduardo Escobar — it is Canha, a former Athletic, who may be the most underrated by the baseball-watching public.
“It’s just the way it is,” said Canha, who didn’t reach the majors until he was 26 and didn’t establish himself as a full-timer there until he was 29. “I was a player that broke into the big leagues at a little bit of a later age than some bigger prospects, and I played for a small-market team. So, naturally, less people know who I am.”
But the low-key, reserved family man Canha isn’t someone who feeds on fame or plays to be popular, according to Bassitt, his longtime Oakland teammate and frequent plane seatmate/cards partner. That approach is a product of years of getting slept on, as a player and as a team, with their former employer.
“They don’t understand how good Canha is, because people see Oakland and they’re just like, whatever,” Bassitt said. “Then they go somewhere else and finally get publicity and the spotlight and it’s like, holy [expletive], this guy is really good. But he’s been good for years.”
In his adjustment to the Mets, Canha has been struck by the vast resources. Not the money necessarily — though the quarter-billion dollars owner Steve Cohen spent during free agency, including $26.5 million for Canha’s two-year deal, is a good sign — but the people.
Everywhere he turns, Canha said, support staffers are asking him if he needs anything. That is a welcomed development for a hitter whom Bassitt called “a dang cage rat” who so often was in the Athletics’ one indoor hitting tunnel that teammates sometimes razzed him for monopolizing it.
“I don’t think I got my unfair share. I got my fair share,” Canha laughed. “There were occasionally days where there would be frustrations because clearly you’re scrambling to get that time.”
So he has spent lots of time with hitting coaches Eric Chavez, a fellow longtime Oakland player, and Jeremy Barnes. And he has been thoroughly acquainted with the athletic trainers since he is, as he acknowledged, “a 33-year-old veteran, I guess you could say now.”
Extra physical therapy and massages and prehab, which is like rehab but for avoiding an injury instead of recovering from one, are worthwhile. Especially for a guy who was hit by pitches “about 800 times last year,” in Bassitt’s estimation. (It actually was 27 times, tied for most in the majors.)
“I’m a guy that can be a lot,” Canha said. “I maybe demand probably people’s attention more than the average person. I’m not afraid to ask for help or ask for resources. I’ve been in the training room every day I’ve been here.”
One reason: Canha has been dealing with gastritis, which is inflammation of the stomach lining. It hasn’t caused him to miss any time — he played plenty during spring training and has started six of the Mets’ seven games — but has required change for a self-identified foodie (whose Instagram handle is @bigleaguefoodie).
“I would eat a meal and just get horrible stomach pain,” he said. “I was dealing with that for a few weeks before spring training even started. I thought I had it under control once I got to Florida, and it was something that popped up again.”
Head athletic trainer Brian Chicklo brought him to the Vero Beach doctor, who ordered an endoscopy. They set Canha up with medication, which he said is working, and guidance that includes four or five smaller meals per day instead of three big ones. He also has tried to cut out certain foods, including fatty meats and sugar (though he risked it with syrup on his pancakes recently and was fine).
“It’s something I really have to pay attention to, it’s like a monthlong process that it should take to get over it,” he said. “I don’t want to say I’m out of the woods yet, but I’m feeling better.”
His bat has been feeling pretty good, too, like usual.
Consider: Only seven players have had a 115 wRC+ — an all-encompassing hitting stat in which 100 is average and 115 is solidly above average — every season since 2018 (minimum 400 plate appearances, or 200 in 2020). Canha is one. The others are some of the best hitters around: Freddie Freeman, Bryce Harper, Mookie Betts, Nelson Cruz, Paul Goldschmidt, Xander Bogaerts.
“Just an absolute grinder,” Bassitt said. “Everything you want in a baseball player.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
