The Twins picked up their second notable arm of the day, acquiring right-hander Tyler Malle in a trade with the Reds, the teams announced. Cincinnati gets shortstops Spencer Steer and Christian Encarnacion-Strand, as well as lefty prospect Steven Hajjar in the deal. Minnesota has been interested in Mahle since the offseason, when they also brought in another Reds starter, Sonny Gray, in a trade that sent 2021 first-round pick Chase Petty to the Reds.
Minnesota has focused on upgrading its pitching staff, both in the rotation and in the bullpen. Having already acquired Orioles closer Jorge Lopez in a deal with Baltimore earlier this morning, their focus appears to have shifted to Mahle, who will reunite with Gray and give the Twins a starter they can control for the remainder of the season. from the current season and for the 2023 campaign.
Male, who turns 28 next month, has shaken off a terrible start to the 2022 season and performed quite well over the past two months. He had a brief stint on the injured list with a shoulder strain in mid-July, but Male missed only minimal time and made two effective starts since his return. 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.
After a breakout 2020 season, Mahle posted 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 on the road and has relied heavily on a splitter and slider that have been graded as above-average pitches at times—recently favoring the splitter (especially as a means of neutralizing lefties).
Beyond Mahle’s solid era, it’s easy to be intrigued by how he might fare when he finally escapes the homer-happy confines of Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati. He has worked to an unsightly 4.83 ERA and averaged 1.69 home runs per nine innings over the last three seasons while in the home field, but boasts an outstanding 2.93 ERA and just a 0.52 HR/ 9 road evaluation. He also has an above-average heater rotation and numbers in the 76th percentile or better, according to Statcast, in each of the following metrics: expected ERA, expected batting average, expected slugging percentage and expected wOBA.
Mahle will give the Twins some much-needed help in a rotation that started the season on a surprisingly strong note but has gone haywire of late. Opening Day rotation members Bailey Ober and Chris Paddock are both on the injured list — Paddock is out for the season due to Tommy John surgery — and 2020 Cy Young runner-up Kenta Maeda is recovering from his own TJ procedure performed in end of last season.
The Twins have relied heavily on Mahle’s former Reds rotation teammate Gray, rookie Joe Ryan and veterans Chris Archer and Dylan Bundy so far in 2022. Gray and Ryan have been strong — despite a disastrous five-homer start for Ryan in his last appearance — and Bundy has been useful, if unspectacular, outside of a pair of disastrous starts of his own in late April and early May. Archer has been limited to four or five starts all season and has started to decline in recent weeks, and the Twins’ overall rotation combination just wasn’t enough in July. Twins starters posted an abysmal 6.49 ERA in July — third-worst among all major league teams.
Mahle is making $5.2MM this season, making him quite affordable, even factoring in his final arbitration raise for next season (or, as The Athletic’s Dan Hayes suggests , in a potential long-term extension). Even absent an extension, he could be on the 2023 staff alongside Gray, Ryan and (health permitting) Maeda. That’s a much more solid foundation than the one the team carried into the current season.
Unlike this morning’s acquisition of Lopez, the Twins paid quite a bit out of the top end of their system to make this deal happen. Steer, the Twins’ third-round pick in 2019, recently moved into the back end of Baseball America’s top-100 midseason rankings after a big first half.
Splitting his time between Double-A and Triple-A, Steer posted 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 has split time between second base, third base and shortstop this season, spending most of his time at the hot corner (although Baseball America cites second as his best position). Given his breakout year, it’s not unreasonable to think that Steer could be an option for the Reds next year.
Meanwhile, Encarnacion-Strand, 22, was a fourth-round pick out of Minnesota last year. As with Steer, he had a terrific season in the minors, posting a combined .302/.374/.612 batting line with 25 home runs, 25 doubles and four triples between Class-A Advanced and Double-A. Strikeouts are more of an issue for Encarnacion-Strand than Steer, as he has fanned about a quarter of his plate 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 a third-base defender at best and may need to come across the diamond.
Hajjar, 21, was the Twins’ second pick in last year’s draft and had an impressive first full pro season this year. Minnesota has limited his workload, evidenced by 45 1/3 innings in 13 total starts, but the results have been strong. The former Michigan standout has posted a 3.18 ERA with an impressive 39.2% strikeout rate thus far, though his 14% walk rate is something he’ll obviously need to refine as he realizes his ceiling as a middle-rotation starter.
Hajjar can reach the mid-to-upper 90s with his heater, which he complements with a slider and changeup. It should be noted that Hajjar spent more than a month on the shelf due to a shoulder strain and his results after his return have deteriorated. Still, he’s clearly a talented arm the Reds could add to the middle tier of a rapidly rebuilding farm system.
With the trade, the Twins have moved on from four of their top five picks in the 2021 draft since trading for Gray just before the season. That will affect a system that was also hit by a string of injuries to last year’s wave of top prospects (eg Josh Winder, Jordan Balazovich). That said, it’s also a testament to the strength of last year’s class. And with the Twins getting strong production from some recent farm graduates — including the aforementioned Ryan reliever Joan Duran and pinch-hitter Jose Miranda, among others — there will be a little less pressure to pitch in the upper levels of their system in the near future .
Time will tell if the Twins have another move up their sleeve. They could certainly use another reliever and/or another starter, not to mention a backup catcher or outfielder — all of whom are rumored to be on Minnesota’s wish list. They have about two hours left to find a way to make another deal (or deals). Meanwhile, the Reds are sure to have other players on the move as general manager Nick Krall and his staff continue to reload the farm while shedding payroll.
C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic first reported (via Twitter) that the Twins and Reds were in “serious” talks regarding Mahle. Jon Heyman of the New York Post tweeted that the deal was in place. TwinsDaily’s Ted Schwertzler was first with the throwback ( Twitter link ).
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