The Tyler Mahle era in Minnesota ended before it ever could get started.
Aug. 2, 2022, was an exciting day for the Minnesota Twins. At the moment, fans felt excitement following a busy trade deadline for the Twins, who needed some reinforcements for a stretch run. They brought Mahle in to be a top-of-the-rotation starting pitcher they desperately needed. In exchange, they traded prospects Spencer Steer, Christian Encarnacion-Strand, and Steven Hajjar to the Cincinnati Reds.
It was a steep price, but the Twins hoped to get Mahle for a stretch run and another year of team control. Mahle had three promising starts with a 2.51 ERA and 12 strikeouts in 14.1 innings. But shoulder soreness derailed the end of his season, which ended during a September 3 start in Chicago against the White Sox, where he allowed four runs in 2.2 innings to close the curtain on his time as a Twin in 2022 with a 4.41 ERA over 16.1 innings in four starts. A fully-rested Mahle pitched well to begin the 2023 season, with a 3.16 ERA in five starts, but Tommy John surgery ended his year early.
Mahle’s Twins tenure officially ended when he signed a two-year, $22 million contract with the Texas Rangers last week. Naturally, any goodwill the front office built up the day they traded for him had dissipated. People were upset with Mahle’s short tenure, but fans are irked mainly by the production from Minnesota’s former prospects in Cincinnati. To put it lightly, the trade was a flop. To put it bluntly, the Mahle trade has a strong case to be the worst trade Derek Falvey’s front office has made.
However, the results of the Mahle trade should not discourage the Twins from doing a similar deal again.
The Twins are again active in the trade market, trying to find a new frontline starter. Despite their success in trading for Sonny Gray and Pablo López, Twins fans will likely be skeptical of a similar transaction because of the scars from the Mahle deal. Fans of small- and mid-market teams like the Twins will always be apprehensive about giving up prospects. Therefore, it’s reasonable that people would be skeptical of Mahle-type deals, given how the last one went.
However, the caveat is that those deals were offseason trades. Teams at the deadline can feel pressured into trading prospects for pitching out of necessity.
The Twins had to give up multiple good prospects for a pitcher like Mahle. Encarnacion-Strand and Steer will likely be cheap, team-controlled players in Cincinnati’s young core for the next five seasons. Still, the Twins didn’t have anywhere for them to go on their roster. Royce Lewis, Carlos Correa, Edouard Julien, and infield prospects like Brooks Lee meant that Steer and Encarnacion-Strand likely weren’t long for the Twins organization.
The Twins could have used those same prospects in a trade for someone else. But no matter which player the Twins got in return for those three prospects, a situation like the Mahle trade is always possible. Losing those two for the value Minnesota got in return was far from ideal. Despite the poor trade, it did not set the Twins organization back in a major way. Currently, the Twins have the 17th-best farm system, according to MLB.com. They still have enough firepower to dangle some more prospects out there to teams.
Through trades for Gray, Maeda, López, and Joe Ryan, the Twins organization has shown that they can find pitchers from outside the organization and make them productive in Minnesota. Mahle was a high-end starting pitcher for the Twins when healthy. He had a 3.16 ERA that his career-best 4.9 percent walk rate aided. He also produced a 27.7 percent strikeout rate and a 31.8 percent chase rate, which was on pace to be his career high. Even if the sample size is too small, he could put together effective starts for the Twins to back these numbers up.
Mahle wasn’t going to be Minnesota’s “ace,” but the Twins certainly could have used another veteran arm in the postseason. Bailey Ober and Ryan were serviceable, but neither were great in the ALDS. Mahle would have at least given the Twins another starting option to use in some of the biggest games of the season if he had continued his early success in 2023. The Mahle trade failed because of injuries. That was a red flag with him before the trade, but that will always be a risk when trading for starting pitching.
Any pitcher the Twins trade for could get hurt, and other starters teams dealt for at the deadline suffered injuries. The Oakland Athletics traded Frankie Montas to the New York Yankees in 2022. Montas was the biggest pitcher at the 2022 trade deadline. He had a career 3.90 ERA with the A’s and a 3.18 ERA that season before the trade.
But Montas had a tough stint in the Bronx. He recorded a 6.15 ERA in eight starts after the Yankees traded for him. A shoulder injury cut his 2023 season short before he could finish the second inning of his first start last season. Yankee fans weren’t happy to see four of their top 25 prospects go to Oakland in the deal, either. No matter how good or healthy the pitcher has been, there’s always the possibility of them getting hurt.
In hindsight, there is no way to justify the Mahle trade. It was a horrible deal in on-field value. The move has a strong case to be Falvey’s worst trade since taking over the Twins after the 2016 season. However, competitive teams need to be willing to gamble on these trades. Sometimes, a pitcher like Mahle or Montas gets injured. Meanwhile, other times, a team receives Justin Verlander in 2017 or 2022 Luis Castillo.
Acquiring Tyler Mahle in August 2022 was a good idea on paper that never reached its full potential. It could easily go down as the worst trade in the Falvey era. However, the Twins could find themselves needing to make another pitching gamble soon, and some fans may have this trade fresh in their minds. Just because some fans are concerned about the Twins “losing” this trade does not mean the front office needs to be.
