Tyler Mahle’s late-season run with the Braves left the kind of impression that can shape an offseason.
Atlanta’s trade for the veteran right-hander looked like a clean win from the start. Mahle arrived with an ERA north of 5.00 for San Francisco, had little apparent market, and the Braves only had to absorb the final $2 million on his deal. From there, he turned into the best deadline pickup in baseball, finishing his time with Atlanta with a 1.99 ERA across his final nine starts.
The bigger question was whether that stretch would hold up when the lights got brighter. It did.
Mahle gave the Braves seven innings against the Phillies, allowing a run in the first and nothing after that. In his next outing against the Dodgers, with Atlanta trying to avoid elimination, he allowed just three hits over 6.1 innings.
He was charged with one earned run, though that came after he had already left the game with a runner on first base. Had Walt Weiss let him finish the inning, the result might have looked very different.
That kind of finish is exactly why a return to Atlanta makes sense on paper. The Braves need more starting pitching, and Mahle clearly found something with them. After Game 4, he made no secret of how he feels about the possibility of coming back.
“For sure. It’d be crazy for anyone not to want to be here,” Mahle said about potentially re-signing this offseason.
“This place is awesome, and there’s no other way to put it. It’d be crazy not to want to play here.”
The fit may be obvious, but the money still has to line up. Alex Anthopoulos has never handed out a multi-year free-agent contract to a starting pitcher since taking over as Braves general manager, and that history matters here. At some point that approach would seem likely to change, but Mahle figures to be one of the more interesting free agents to track all winter.
How he’s viewed around the league will determine the shape of the deal. If clubs lean on his numbers with the Giants, he may be staring at a one-year prove-it contract.
If they buy into what he did in Atlanta, he could cash in. Anthopoulos will likely try to make something happen, but starting pitching in free agency tends to get chaotic fast, and Atlanta still has its own limits on what it will and won’t do for individual players.
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