ESPN has finished their Top 100 Major League Baseball Prospect List for the 2017 season. The final portion of the list came out on Friday. The Cincinnati Reds landed five players in the Top 100: Nick Senzel (15), Amir Garrett (39), Jesse Winker (49), Luis Castillo (#94) and Robert Stephenson (99). Today, Keith Law released his “Just a bit outside of the Top 100” list for Insiders over at ESPN.com. Right handed pitcher Tyler Mahle made this article.
He doesn’t have the upside of other Reds pitching prospects like Amir Garrett, Robert Stephenson or just-signed Vladimir Gutierrez, but might have a better shot than any of them to have a career as at least a fourth or fifth starter.
While the scouting report supplied in the article doesn’t quite line up with what I saw and had reported to me during 2016, the part above still makes some sense. Mahle doesn’t have the pure stuff of those guys listed, but he is more advanced than the others are. He also throws more strikes than the first two, and we just don’t know enough about Gutierrez at this point to say much for him.
Tyler Mahle was rather dominant to start the year with the Daytona Tortugas. He posted a 2.50 ERA in 79.1 innings pitched. That came along with 17 walks and 76 strikeouts to go with 58 hits allowed. He ran into some struggles in Double-A after a midseason promotion. With Pensacola he posted a 4.92 ERA in 71.1 innings pitched. He walked 20 batters and had 65 strikeouts with 78 hits allowed.
At age 21, he was one of the younger pitchers in Double-A. Having some struggles at that age, at that level is unsurprising. And even the struggles were mostly in the final few starts. Over his first 10 starts with the Blue Wahoos, Tyler Mahle had a 3.54 ERA. The final four starts really crushed his stats, though. In 18.0 innings he was charged with 18 earned runs. He’ll likely begin the 2017 season back in Pensacola’s rotation.