Rangers manager Bruce Bochy informed the club’s beat today that right-hander Tyler Mahle is going to be placed on the 15-day injured list with some shoulder stiffness. Righty Jon Gray will be reinstated from his own IL stint in a corresponding move. Kennedi Landry of MLB.com was among those who relayed the news on X.
Mahle, now 29, underwent Tommy John surgery last summer just before hitting free agency for the first time in his career. The Rangers then signed him to a two-year, $22MM deal, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to count on him to join the club until some point in the middle of the 2024 season at the earliest. He was on the IL until two weeks ago and has since made three starts. He went five innings in the first of those, then four and two thirds, followed by just three innings in Sunday’s game.
It’s unclear if the shoulder was bothering him in his last outing or has been nagging at him since. While he was removed after just three innings, he also allowed four earned runs on six hits while recording just one strikeout, so his removal might simply have been about his performance rather than his health.
Shoulder issues have been a problem for him before, as he only made six starts after July 2 in the 2022 season due to a strain and some inflammation. Between those shoulder issues and his recent Tommy John layoff, it’s been three straight seasons of having a truncated workload.
The Rangers have fallen back in the standings lately and are now 11 games back of the Astros in the West and 12.5 games back of a Wild Card spot. Both the Playoff Odds at FanGraphs and the PECOTA Standings at Baseball Prospectus give them just a 0.4% chance of cracking the postseason at this point.
With the club’s season on the ropes, they can make their decisions based on optimizing results next year. Ideally, Mahle would be building up his workload since he hasn’t pitched much in recent years, but pitching through an injury would run the risk of aggravating a shoulder that has given him problems in the past, so it seems the club has decided a breather is the best decision for now. Assuming the issue isn’t major, perhaps he can return for the final few weeks and log some innings in September.
Going forward, the club’s rotation could be facing notable changes. Jacob deGrom is starting a rehab assignment this week and Max Scherzer will be as well, per Landry on X. When those two come back, they will likely slot into the rotation with Gray, Nathan Eovaldi and Andrew Heaney, with Cody Bradford and Dane Dunning also in the mix and perhaps Mahle coming back down the line.
Looking ahead to next year, Scherzer and Heaney are impending free agents with Eovaldi perhaps heading to the open market along with them. Eovaldi’s contract has a conditional $20MM player option that he unlocks if he totals 300 innings pitched over 2023 and 2024 or finishes in the top five in Cy Young voting this year. Even if he unlocks that option, which is possible since he’s at 271 innings since the start of last year, he might turn it down and elect free agency since he’s having a strong season and could look for a bigger guarantee in free agency.
Without those three, the Texas rotation for 2025 projects to include deGrom, Mahle and Gray. The latter two, as mentioned, are coming off lengthy Tommy John rehabs and could have workload concerns next year. Bradford has also missed significant time this year, due to a low back strain, and only has 14 big league starts to his name. Dunning has often been in the club’s swingman/sixth starter role, moving between the bullpen and rotation as needed. Prospects Jack Leiter and Owen White are on the 40-man roster but both have ongoing control issues.
The Rangers are still the reigning World Series champions for a few more months but the title defense has obviously not been what they had in mind. Perhaps that will lead them to shake up their rotation mix in the offseason, as there’s plenty of uncertainty in next year’s group.
