Tyler Mahle finished 2026 looking like a pitcher who can still tilt a rotation, and that matters for a Twins team searching for useful innings without breaking the bank.
Mahle, now 31, turned in 2.1 fWAR for the Braves, his best total since posting 2.2 fWAR for two teams in 2022. It was a strong cap to a season that reminded clubs what he can bring when he’s right: durability issues aside, real production, better-than-expected run prevention, and a profile that could fit in plenty of places.
Minnesota should be among the teams paying attention. Mahle has already spent time with the Twins, arriving in the trade that sent Spencer Steer, Christian Encarnacion-Strand and Steve Hajjar to the Reds. He made nine starts for Minnesota across 2022 and 2023, going 2-3 with a 3.64 ERA, a 117 ERA+ and a 4.72 FIP.
His path since then has kept him on the move. After becoming a free agent in the winter of 2023, Mahle signed a two-year, $22 million deal with the Rangers. He opened 2026 with the Giants on a one-year, $10 million contract signed January 5, then got dealt to Atlanta on August 2, hours before the trade deadline, for right-hander Anthony Molina.
The appeal for Minnesota is pretty simple: the rotation has some pieces already. Pablo Lopez could be back, and he would join Joe Ryan and Taj Bradley at the top. Bradley just had a breakout year and joined the small group of pitchers in franchise history to strike out 200 or more batters in a season.
If the group stays healthy, that gives the Twins three legitimate starters and leaves room for the rest of the depth chart to sort itself out. Mahle, Bailey Ober and Dean Kremer could battle for the final two spots, and it also makes sense for Minnesota to lean on a sixth starter at times or use Kremer in a multi-inning relief role to help support Ober, who remains one of the more contact-prone pitchers among that group.
Mahle’s case gets more interesting when you look at what he’s done recently relative to the others. The big caveat is workload: injuries have limited him in recent years, including the Tommy John recovery and later right shoulder discomfort. But when he’s been on the mound, the results have been strong enough to matter.
Over the last two seasons, he has the lowest home run rate allowed per nine innings and the highest ground-ball rate among the pitchers being considered here. And if you use his fWAR across that span as the guide - a stretch in which he made 43 of his 46 starts between 2025 and 2026 - he comes in at 2.1, behind only Ryan at 2.9 and Lopez at 2.5.
That doesn’t mean Mahle belongs ahead of Bradley in the hierarchy. It does mean he has enough value to fit anywhere in the mix, whether that’s in the middle of the rotation or further down it.
His finish in 2026 only sharpened that case. After a first half with the Giants that was uneven - 5.31 ERA, .795 OPS allowed over 78 innings - he settled in and posted a 2.54 ERA over his final 71 innings, cutting the OPS allowed to .605. Once he got to Atlanta, he went 4-1 with a 1.99 ERA, and in his last nine starts he allowed more than one earned run only twice.
That late surge made the questions around him look a lot smaller. He then followed it up with a strong outing in the postseason, throwing 6 1/3 innings and allowing one earned run against the Dodgers in Game 4 of the NLDS.
Atlanta lost that game 4-1 and was knocked out by the reigning two-time champions, but Mahle did his part against the team many see as the standard in the postseason. For him, it was a defeat on the scoreboard and a statement on the mound - the kind of ending that can leave free agency looking a lot more interesting than it did a few months earlier.
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