Angels may have found the key to Ryan Johnson's sudden success (and it's really weird)

The Los Angeles Angels were probably a bit hasty to bring up Ryan Johnson last season (what’s new?) after just 12 starts in high-A, but a strong spring earned him a spot on the 2026 Opening Day roster. He had a rough first start and went on the IL with a viral infection, then was optioned back to Triple-A after three relief outings with the big-league club following the infection. 

As recently as July 31, his ERA sat at 7.63 after allowing five runs on six hits in 4.1 innings against the Brewers. It was ugly, and it looked like the kind of ugly that would have to wait for the offseason to fix. The next start was better in some ways, with just one run allowed, but he walked five and struck out one. Then the Angels blew up their pitching coaching staff, and Johnson almost immediately turned into a different pitcher.

Over his last seven starts, he’s gone 39.2 innings with 32 strikeouts, 14 walks, and a 2.04 ERA. Opponents are hitting just .186. An easy explanation probably accounts for a good chunk of what’s happened. His pitch mix is better. He’s throwing fewer sinkers, more cutters, and that’s been huge. But something else has changed, and it has nothing to do with anything you see during a game. You have to be at the park early to see this change.

Ryan Johnson's sudden Angels breakthrough has a bizarre explanation nobody expected

Some bullpen routines are weird, but Johnson’s is one most haven’t seen. He does handstands before he throws. Yes, his feet are in the air, his hands are on the ground, and he stands on them. The idea is to activate his shoulders and get his body “in sync.” Okay, that part actually makes sense once he explains it. 

But after most pitches, he snaps his fingers four times. He calls it “imprinting,” a form of positive reinforcement meant to teach his body to repeat what it just did well. It’s not all that different than a clicker to reinforce a good activity in a dog. He picked up both habits at Dallas Baptist, where coaches pushed players to find their own processes. 

So that’s been what he did before he ever threw a big league pitch. That makes the timing so interesting. His current outstanding stretch lines up exactly with the day Mike Maddux, Dom Chiti, and Darryl Scott were fired, and Tim Leveque and Michael Wuertz took over.

The staff had walked more hitters than anyone, and manager Kurt Suzuki has talked openly about simplifying things for their younger arms. “We get caught up in doing all these reports,” he said. “So we’re trying to simplify it a little bit and just show them what they do really well.” It’s certainly fair to wonder if that philosophy is more than just pitch selection. 

A staff more interested in stripping things down than dictating every detail of a start is, at minimum, a staff that is far less likely to have a problem with an unorthodox warmup routine. It’s hard not to connect the dots between a coaching change built around getting out of pitchers’ ways and a guy who's built his routine around doing things his way.

The complicated version of the story surfaced on September 9 in Boston when Johnson threw six innings and survived two solo home runs to beat the Red Sox. He struck out five in that game while allowing three runs on homers from Roman Anthony and Wilyer Abreu. He got the win, and it dropped his season ERA to its lowest point so far this year: 5.12.

It also looked a whole lot like his overall season. He showed real swing-and-miss stuff mixed in with some mistakes. The underlying numbers aren’t quite as bullish on Johnson as the back-of-the-baseball-card numbers. His FIP is 4.33 in these last seven starts. His xFIP is 4.76. His xERA is 4.21. All are better than what he showed and what he was before, but there’s reason to be cautious. His strand rate is extremely high at well over 90 percent.

So no, this isn’t necessarily sustainable. But it’s also fair to note that he understands that. “I want to do it for a full season,” he said. “Then for years and years, not just for half a season.”

Maybe the coaching change fixed something in his arsenal, and the handstands and snaps are the same background noise they’ve always been. But maybe a simplified approach and a green light to be himself, quirks and all, are more connected than anyone wants to say out loud. That’s not a riddle that the Angels need to solve right now. They just need Johnson to keep pitching as he has since August 11. If letting him snap his fingers and stand on his hands in the bullpen gets him there, nobody on this staff will stop him.

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