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ROSTERED IN: 26% of leagues
ANALYSIS: Full disclosure: the main drawback with Tyler Mahle is David Bell's propensity to pull him early, as evidenced by his Sunday outing of 2.2 IP, four hits, four walks, three earned runs, and three strikeouts. In fact, Sunday's game against St.Louis marks the fourth time this season Mahle was pulled after 4.0 IP or less. Now, with that discouraging note out of the way, there is still plenty of reason to deploy the 25-year-old starter in his next appearance.
Before Sunday, Mahle sported much-improved figures across the board, with a 3.89 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, 1.5 HR/9, and 10.9 K/9, with the only digression being his BB/9 going from 2.4 to 3.2 since 2019. Mahle's grounder rate has tanked since last year from 47% to 29.2%, but that has hardly been an issue with his batted ball hard contact rate dropping to 33.7% and his soft contact rate climbing to 20.2%. His walk rate may have risen by 2.6%, but with his strikeout rate following suit with a 6.8% uptick, his 75.9% LOB% is considerably less frightening. In splitting his pitching repertoire up between just three pitches: a fastball, a slider, and a split-finger; it is very encouraging that he achieved career-high velocities respectively at 93.9, 86.5, and 87.6 MPH. If you are willing to roll the dice on Tyler Mahle seeing 5.0 IP or more in a given start, he offers a more astute ability to minimize potential on-base damage while racking up a robust volume of whiffs.
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