Reds Trade Tyler Mahle To Twins
The Twins have nabbed their second notable arm of the day, acquiring right-hander Tyler Mahle in a trade with the Reds, the teams announced. Cincinnati is receiving infield prospects Spencer Steer and Christian Encarnacion-Strand as well as left-handed pitching prospect Steven Hajjar in the deal. Minnesota has had interest in Mahle dating back to the offseason, when they also picked up another Reds starter, Sonny Gray, in a swap that sent 2021 first-rounder Chase Petty to the Reds.
Minnesota has been focused on upgrading its pitching staff, both in the rotation and in the bullpen. Having already landed Orioles closer Jorge Lopez in a trade with Baltimore earlier this morning, it seems their focus has shifted to Mahle, who’d reunite with Gray and give the Twins a starter they can control for the remainder of the current season and for the 2023 campaign.
Mahle, 28 next month, has shaken off a terrible start to the 2022 season and pitched quite well over the past two months. He had a brief stint on the injured list due to a shoulder strain in mid-July, but Mahle only missed minimal time and has made a pair of effective starts since returning. Dating back to May 29, he’s pitched to a 2.83 ERA with a 27.9% strikeout rate and 7% walk rate in 57 1/3 innings.
Since a breakout during the 2020 season, Mahle has pitched to a 3.93 ERA with a 27.4% strikeout rate and 8.9% walk rate in 332 big league innings. He’s averaged 94 mph with his heater along the way and leaned heavily on a splitter and slider that have both graded out as above-average pitches at times — more recently favoring the splitter (particularly as a means of neutralizing lefties).
Beyond Mahle’s solid ERA, it’s easy to be intrigued by how he might fare when finally escaping the homer-happy confines of Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park. He’s worked to an ugly 4.83 ERA and yielded an average of 1.69 home runs per nine innings over the past three seasons while pitching at home but boasts an outstanding 2.93 ERA and just a 0.52 HR/9 mark on the road. He also has above-average spin on his heater and rates in the 76th percentile or better, per Statcast, in each of the following metrics: expected ERA, expected batting average, expected slugging percentage and expected wOBA.
Mahle will give the Twins some desperately needed help in the rotation, which started the season on a surprisingly strong note but has floundered of late. Opening Day rotation members Bailey Ober and Chris Paddack are both on the injured list — Paddack lost for the season due to Tommy John surgery — and 2020 Cy Young runner-up Kenta Maeda is recovering from his own TJ procedure, performed late last season.
The Twins have leaned heavily on Mahle’s former Reds rotationmate Gray, rookie Joe Ryan and veterans Chris Archer and Dylan Bundy so far in 2022. Gray and Ryan have both been strong — a disastrous five-homer start for Ryan in his last appearance notwithstanding — and Bundy has been serviceable, if unspectacular, outside a pair of catastrophic starts of his own at the end of April and in early May. Archer has been limited to four or five outings per start throughout the season and begun to wilt in recent weeks, however, and the Twins’ overall rotation mix simply underwhelmed in July. Twins starters yielded an awful 6.49 ERA in July — third-worst among all big league teams.
Mahle is earning $5.2MM this season, making him plenty affordable even when factoring in his final arbitration raise for next season (or, as Dan Hayes of The Athletic suggests, in a potential long-term extension). Even absent an extension, he can be penciled into the 2023 staff alongside Gray, Ryan and (health-permitting) Maeda. That’s a much more solid foundation than the team carried into the current season.
Unlike this morning’s acquisition of Lopez, the Twins paid fairly extensively from the top end of their system to get this deal done. Steer, the Twins’ third-round pick in 2019, recently moved into the back end of Baseball America’s midseason top-100 rankings on the heels of a big first half.
Splitting his time between Double-A and Triple-A, Steer has turned in a combined .269/.361/.528 batting line with 20 home runs, 23 doubles, three triples, a 17% strikeout rate and a strong 10.8% walk rate. He’s split his time between second base, third base and shortstop this season, spending the bulk of his time at the hot corner (although Baseball America cites second as his best position). Given his breakout showing this year, it’s not unreasonable to think Steer could be an option for the Reds within the next year.
The 22-year-old Encarnacion-Strand, meanwhile was Minnesota’s fourth-round selection just last year. As with Steer, he’d having a huge season in the minors, logging a combined .302/.374/.612 batting line with 25 home runs, 25 doubles and four triples between Class-A Advanced and Double-A. Strikeouts have been more of an issue for Encarnacion-Strand than for Steer, as he’s fanned in about a quarter of his place appearances this season against a solid 8.7% walk rate. BA ranked him 14th in the Twins’ system, touting his plus-plus raw power but noting that he’s at best a fringey defender at third base and may need to move across the diamond.
Hajjar, 21, was the Twins’ second-round pick in last year’s draft and has had an impressive first full pro season this year. Minnesota has been limiting his workload, evidenced by 45 1/3 innings across a combined 13 starts, but the results have been strong. The former Michigan standout has logged a 3.18 ERA with a gaudy 39.2% strikeout rate so far, although his 14% walk rate is something he’ll obviously need to hone is he’s to ever realize his ceiling as a mid-rotation starter.
Hajjar can reach the mid-to-upper 90s with his heater, which he complements with a slider and changeup. Notably, Hajjar did spend more than a month on the shelf due to a shoulder strain, and his results since returning have been diminished. Still, he’s a clearly talented arm whom the Reds can add to the middle tier of a farm system they’re rapidly restocking.
With this trade, the Twins have now moved on from four of their top five picks in the 2021 draft since trading for Gray just prior to the season. That’ll take a toll on the system, which has also been harmed by a series of injuries to last year’s wave of top prospects (e.g. Josh Winder, Jordan Balazovic). That said, it’s also a testament to the strength of last year’s class. And, with the Twins receiving strong production from some recent graduates of the farm — including the aforementioned Ryan leverage reliever Jhoan Duran and slugging corner infielder Jose Miranda, among others — there’ll be a bit less pressure to tap into the upper levels of their system in the immediate future.
Time will tell whether the Twins have another move up their sleeve. They could certainly use another reliever and/or another starter, to say nothing of a backup catcher or an outfielder — all rumored to be on Minnesota’s wishlist. There’s about two hours left for them to find a way to pull together another deal (or deals). The Reds, meanwhile, will surely have other players on the move as general manager Nick Krall and his staff continue to restock the farm and simultaneously slash payroll.
C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic first reported (via Twitter) that the Twins and Reds were in “serious” talks regarding Mahle. The New York Post’s Jon Heyman tweeted that a deal was in place. Ted Schwerzler of TwinsDaily was first with the return (Twitter link).
Twins Rumors: Mahle, Castillo, Marlins, Coulombe, Winder, Catcher
The Twins currently hold a 2.5-game lead in the American League Central, but another poor performance from a pitching staff that has squandered far too many leads this season cost them a win over the Brewers last night. Upgrading the pitching staff will be a priority for the Twins before next Tuesday’s deadline, and to that end, they’ve been in the market on both Reds ace Luis Castillo and Athletics top starter Frankie Montas, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan.
The Athletic’s Dan Hayes, however, writes that the Twins are more interested in Castillo’s teammate Tyler Mahle than in Castillo himself. Hayes adds that the Twins have been in talks with the Marlins about pitching help. Minnesota and Miami, it should be noted, have had talks regarding potential swaps sending pitching to Minnesota frequently in offseasons past. The Marlins are reportedly open to offers on Pablo Lopez, and reliever Anthony Bass, Dylan Floro and Steven Okert are a few speculative trade candidates in the Marlins’ bullpen. Generally speaking, the Marlins are deep in pitching options that’ll appeal not only to the Twins but other clubs seeking upgrades.
Whether the preference for Mahle over Castillo — which Hayes also indicated back in the offseason — is a reflection of asking price or of the Twins’ belief that he has the superior raw stuff isn’t clear. But Mahle has flown somewhat under the radar for the past few seasons despite being quite similar, statistically, to both Castillo and Montas since 2020.
It’s hard not to wonder just what Mahle’s performance might look like in another uniform, as his numbers away from the homer-happy Great American Ball Park are tantalizing. Few pitchers have such a dramatic home/road split as Mahle, who since 2020 has pitched to a 2.93 ERA on the road but an ugly 4.89 mark at home. Mahle has allowed 1.75 homers per nine innings pitched in Cincinnati, compared to just 0.52 long balls per nine on the road. He also has a better strikeout rate and opponents’ hard-hit rate than either Castillo or Montas, dating back to 2020 — albeit with the highest walk rate of the three.
Broadly speaking, Mahle is much closer to the Montas/Castillo tier of pitcher than most pundits credit him. And, with a $5.2MM salary compared to Castillo’s $7.35MM mark, he’s a bit more affordable than his teammate and right in line with Montas ($5MM). Like that duo, he’s controlled through the 2023 season.
Mahle got out to an awful start in 2022, pitching to a 6.32 ERA through his first ten appearances. However, most of the damage against him came in two brutal outings — eight runs versus the Cubs on May 24 and seven runs against the Dodgers on April 17 — and he’s been excellent over the past two months. Dating back to May 29, Mahle has a 2.81 ERA, 27.5% strikeout rate and 7.7% walk rate in 51 1/3 innings. Overall, he’s sitting on a 4.48 ERA this season, but marks like xERA (3.30) and FIP (3.78) feel he’s been quite a bit better than that. A minor shoulder strain sent him to the IL earlier this month, but Mahle returned Sunday to fire six quality innings.
Regardless of the specific names they acquire, the Twins seem nearly certain to augment both their rotation and their bullpen in the next six days. Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax have been their only two consistently reliable arms, and their ‘pen depth took a further hit yesterday when left-hander Danny Coulombe was transferred to the 60-day injured list. The Twins announced today that Coulombe required season-ending surgery to repair the labrum in his left hip, subtracting a quietly useful lefty from the mix.
The 32-year-old Coulombe is a journeyman southpaw who found a home in the Twins organization back in 2020. He only made two appearances with the Twins that season but returned on a minor league deal in 2021 and has been solid overall in the Twins’ relief corps. Dating back to 2020, Coulombe has pitched 49 1/3 innings with aa 2.92 ERA, 22% strikeout rate and 9.3% walk rate. He’ll get big league service time while finishing out the year on the 60-day IL, but he’ll be a clear non-tender candidate following that surgery.
Meanwhile, Phil Miller of the Minneapolis Star Tribune tweets that promising young righty Josh Winder, one of the Twins’ brightest arms and currently the game’s No. 68 prospect at Baseball America, is being shut due to recurring shoulder discomfort. The Twins are still trying to determine the cause of the issue, but the loss of Winder, who’s already given them 45 1/3 Major League innings (3.77 ERA) is a huge hit to the Twins’ rotation and bullpen depth.
For all the focus on the Twins’ pitching staff, it’s not their only area of need. Catcher Ryan Jeffers‘ fractured thumb will sideline him for up to eight weeks, which has pushed Gary Sanchez into a starting catcher role with Minnesota. He’d previously been used more evenly between designated hitter and catcher, but Sanchez will now get the lion’s share of playing time behind the plate now. Caleb Hamilton, a 2016 23-round pick who’d never hit much above A-ball prior to this season, is currently serving as his backup.
It’s not terribly surprising, then, that Darren Wolfson of 1500 SKOR North mentions in his latest podcast that the Twins will explore the market for a more veteran backup to Sanchez. Twins fans probably shouldn’t expect to see Willson Contreras riding into town anytime soon, but players like Tucker Barnhart or Pedro Severino jump out as possibly available veteran backups.
Wolfson adds, via Twitter, that outfield prospect Matt Wallner and infield prospect Spencer Steer have been mentioned in trade scenarios the team has had recently — and understandably so. Wallner, the No. 39 overall pick in 2019, recently jumped to Triple-A after posting a .299/.436/.597 batting line (157 wRC+) and 21 homers in 342 plate appearances with the Twins’ Double-A club. Steer, selected just 51 picks after Wallner, is hitting a combined .274/.359/.549 in 78 games between Double-A and Triple-A. He recently just landed in the No. 99 spot on Baseball America’s latest Top 100 prospect ranking. Certainly, neither Wallner nor Steer would be included in a small trade for a backup catcher, but it’s easy to see both being the type of players coveted by teams peddling controllable help in the rotation and bullpen.