Tyler Mahle is coming off of his best start of the season, tossing seven shutout innings with just four hits allowed, a walk all while striking out nine batters. The numbers were strong, but let’s take a look at at what his stuff looked like throughout the game.
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Fastball | The pitch doesn’t have impressive velocity, sitting in the 89-90 range, touching 91 or 92 at times. Where it is impressive is that he can locate the pitch most of the time to different parts of the zone. When the pitch is in the lower half of the zone it also shows good late sinking action, but it will flatten out when the ball is up in the zone.
Curveball | This is the pitch that Mahle went to when he needed a punchout more often than not. It was mostly an average offering, but flashed itself slightly above-average every so often. It would also be a little below-average at times as well. Overall it’s an average offering with solid 12-6 action.
Slider | He threw this pitch more often last season, and I’m not sure there were actually any true sliders thrown in the game rather than just a few curveballs that had a little bit of sweep to them.
Change Up | The change up only showed up a few times in the game. The curveball was dominating the opponents, so there wasn’t a need to go to the pitch too often. When it did show up it showed itself as an average offering with a little bit of armside run and sink to it.
Mahle’s control lets his pitches play up right now, especially at this level. As he moves up the ladder that may not continue unless he is able to command the strikezone with all of his offerings. Even with that, he’s showing three or four average pitches that he can control with a profile for a back-end starter in the big leagues, but there’s not too much room for error at this point either. He will need to continue to prove himself at each level as more of a control guy than a big time stuff pitcher.
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