Bruce Bochy’s job with the team pays off immediately. Shayna Rubin has posted news that the San Francisco Giants “are close” to signing starter Tyler Mahle to a 1-year deal. [Update: Mark Feinsand confirms it’s a done deal.] When healthy, the righty was Bochy’s second-best starter in 2025 when they were both Rangers.
Unfortunately, Mahle has rarely been healthy, having not completed a full season since 2022 (23 starts, 120.2 IP). He spent three critical months on the IL following right shoulder fatigue.
Through May, he was pitching his way onto the AL All-Star team with a 1.64 ERA (3.17 FIP) through 12 starts (66 IP). His 1.6 fWAR over that span made him as valuable as Dylan Cease, Robbie Ray, Nick Pivetta, and Framber Valdez. So, the upside is there, but the challenge is fairly obvious: how to keep him healthy. And just to belabor the point, through his first 5 seasons he through 489.1 IP (95 G). Over his last 4 seasons, he’s appeared in just 47 games and thrown 245.2 IP.
So, the health track record ought to temper enthusiasm somewhat, and because of how the health has limited his innings pitched, it makes a lot of sense to temper the extreme upside you might want to envision. The Giants did not just steal away Jason Schmidt or find their next Kevin Gausman (insofar as refurbishing a guy into an ace).
Back in April, the Giants hosted the Rangers, and in that series preview I wrote of Mahle:
So, this segment is about the righty Mahle and his 0.68 ERA in 26.2 IP. He has a 2.49 FIP! What’s going on here?
This MLB.com article chalks it up to health. Bruce Bochy says it’s because “he’s got a lot of poise out there.” Statcast is… unclear. Without altering his pitch mix or increasing velocity or spin he’s putting up much better results here in the early season than ever before.
The always-great Michael Baumann spotlighted Mahle in this May 28th post for FanGraphs (just before the wheels came off Mahle’s season, coincidentally). Among the highlights that speak to Mahle’s upside not being a #1:
Mahle had been a bit of a hipster favorite as an upper-mid-rotation starter in Cincinnati and then briefly in Minnesota — far from a household name, but from 2020 to 2022, he’d been quite good, and in high volume.
[…]
At least in 2025, everything has been working according to plan. […] But if you look over at the stats we traditionally use to judge flukiness, Mahle’s line lights up like the winning spin on a slot machine.
And then he goes on to say that the FIP is probably a better indicator that he’s closer to the guy who debuted with the Reds (#3 or #4 starter) than the next big thing. You know what, though, that’s totally fine? The Giants need all the help they can get in the rotation and adding a potential #3 into that mix is solid.
ZiPS still projects him to pitch fewer than 100 innings and closer to that 4-FIP range of talent, limiting his projected value to about a win above replacement. Other projection systems have him closer to 1.5-2 fWAR talent, which puts him right in line with being a second Landen Roupp… or Roupp being a second Mahle.
In any case, the Giants have solidified their rotation in the best manner possible given their self-imposed financial and cultural limitations. Mahle was perhaps the last great high risk/high reward low cost arm on the market today.
