SAN FRANCISCO – Tyler Mahle isn’t stretched out far enough yet to be able to pitch deep into games, which was why his first start for the Giants ended after four innings Saturday.
In the brief time he was on the mound, however, the 31-year-old right-hander did enough to show that he’s headed in the right direction, and it shouldn’t be long before he’s ready to shoulder a bigger load.
Mahle threw 80 pitches — five fewer than the coaching staff had penciled him in for — and allowed two runs and five hits. He walked one and struck out five of the 17 batters he faced.
“Not great,” Mahle said of his outing to reporters at Oracle Park following the Giants’ third consecutive loss to begin the 2026 MLB season. “Just didn’t make pitches when I needed to. Split was good, fastball had some life. Just didn’t locate them like I wanted to in key situations.”
On a day when he made his Giants debut after signing a one-year deal in the winter, Mahle was easily his own worst critic.
He seemed happy with most of his pitches, but Mahle’s control was all over the map; Thirty of his 80 pitches were balls.
In many ways, it was a typical first start for most pitchers, let alone one playing for a new team.
For Mahle, though, this one might have been different than the previous nine seasons making his first start.
A year ago, Mahle was on a rocket ship toward stardom before he developed a rotator cuff strain that landed him on the IL for three months. He returned to finish the season with some small successes but has yet to get back to the pitcher he was during the first three months of the 2025 season.
Mahle also got sick for a bit of time in spring training, which further hindered his ability to lengthen out. Even then, Mahle had the Giants brass smiling, as he finished the spring with 13 strikeouts in 10 innings without allowing a run over four starts.
That’s why manager Tony Vitello remains encouraged, even though Mahle is likely to be on a pitch-count limit for his next few starts.
“Probably a little shorter day than he wanted, but at the same time our comments in the corner were (that) we’re pretty pleased with what he was able to do today,” Vitello said.
Mahle pitched out of a jam in the first inning after giving up a two-out triple to Cody Bellinger. After the Yankees got their lead-off runner on base in the second, Mahle got back-to-back called strikeouts against Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Jose Caballero.
The third inning was really the only frame where Mahle struggled.
He walked Trent Grisham leading off, before getting Aaron Judge to strike out swinging. After Bellinger singled to put runners at the corners, Ben Rice lined a sharp double into the right-center gap that drove in both runners.
Beyond that, the Giants seemed pleased with the overall effort from Mahle.
“I thought it was good. Great, actually,” Giants catcher Patrick Bailey told NBC Sports Bay Area. “Four-seam was probably the best I’ve seen it. He just knows who he is and believes in (himself) and pitches to that. It’s really impressive.”
Besides a victory, the only thing that would have made this a better day for Mahle would be pitching deeper into the game. He was informed before the game that the target number was around 85 pitches.
“I finished the fourth at 80,” Mahle said. “The way things were going, I would have went well above that. We want to go deep in games whatever the pitch count is. That’s the goal. Six innings is the baseline we should be striving for.”
That should happen at some point soon, although at 0-3, the Giants have bigger fish to fry. Mahle’s debut with his new club is one of the very few highlights the Orange and Black had on its opening homestand.
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