The Cincinnati Reds have announced that right handed pitcher Tyler Mahle will be called up on Sunday. The start will be the Major League debut for the 22-year-old.
Tyler Mahle has split his 2017 season between the Double-A Pensacola Blue Wahoos and the Triple-A Louisville Bats. In 14 starts in the first half of the season with Pensacola he posted a 1.59 ERA in 85.0 innings. That came along with 17 walks and 87 strikeouts as he dominated the Southern League. He was promoted to Triple-A and has made 10 starts for the Bats since then. Things haven’t been quite as dominant as they were in Double-A, but Mahle’s still been running through the International League. In his 59.1 innings he’s posted a 2.73 ERA with 13 walks and 51 strikeouts for Louisville.
In total he’s thrown 144.1 innings with season and allowed just 109 hits and 30 walks. His ERA between the two stops is 2.06 and he’s struck out 138 batters. It’s hard to be much more dominant than that. 2017 has just been a continuation of what Tyler Mahle’s done almost every stop along the way. Only a blip on the radar struggle last season, late in the year in Double-A shows up as even a small hiccup since he was drafted in 2013 by the Reds.
With what seems to be excellent timing on my part, I wrote up a full scouting report on Tyler Mahle Friday afternoon. If you haven’t checked that out yet, go do so now. While I get into far more details within that article, here’s a quick and dirty scouting report on the right hander:
- Fastball in the low 90’s that he can move multiple ways and locate well. Can touch 97 at times when he really wants to reach back for the velocity.
- Slider in the mid 80’s – average pitch.
- Change up in the mid 80’s – fringe average pitch.
- Curveball in the upper 70’s – fringe average pitch
- Good control
As I said, there’s a lot more in the linked scouting report above, so be sure to read that. Currently Tyler Mahle is not on the 40-man roster and the roster is at 40 players. That means that there will need to be a roster spot created. My guess is that they will simply place Scott Feldman on the 60-day disabled list after he had knee surgery this past week and was ruled out for the year. What move that they make to place him on the 25-man roster is more up in the air. Maybe the team will place Homer Bailey on the 10-day disabled list and just essentially skip him for a start, then when roster expand in September there will be no need for another roster move.