With the 2025 Texas Rangers season having come to an end, we shall be, over the course of the offseason, taking a look at every player who appeared in a major league game for the Texas Rangers in 2025.

Today we are looking at Tyler Mahle.

Tyler Mahle had a very strange year.

He missed three months of the season. He was expected to miss three months of the 2024 season, of course, recovering from Tommy John surgery. He was not expected to miss three months of the 2025 season. That was not great.

When Mahle was on the mound, though, he was great! He had a 2.18 ERA in 16 starts and allowed two runs or fewer in 13 of those starts! The most runs he allowed in a single game was 4! That’s pretty great, right!

When Mahle was on the mound, though, he was also kinda not great. His K rate of 19.1% was the lowest he’s ever had in a season where he threw more than 20 innings, and slotted in the 23rd percentile in MLB, per Statcast. His walk rate of 8.4% was a little below average. His 4.35 xERA was his highest since 2018.

But he had a 3.37 FIP on the season — that’s good! Of the 156 pitchers this year who threw at least 80 innings, Mahle’s 3.37 FIP was tied with George Kirby for 24th!* That’s good!

* I just discovered that Jimmy Herget pitched 83 innings for the Rockies this season, and put up a 2.48 ERA and 3.32 FIP. I wouldn’t have expected that. Also, someone named Carmen Mlodzinski for the Pirates had a 3.33 FIP, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard of that person before.

But he had a 4.35 xERA and 4.43 xFIP on the season — that’s not great!

Not surprisingly, given the disparity in his ERA, FIP, xFIP and xERA, Mahle was rather fortunate in regards to balls in play. Opposing batters hit just .218 against him, which is a shockingly low number for someone who strikes out so few batters. That low batting average was driven by his having both a very low BABIP — .260 — and a very low rate of home runs to fly balls — 4.9%.

Further aiding his ERA cause was his strand rate — 84.6% of runners he allowed ended up not scoring. Of the 156 pitchers who threw at least 80 innings last year, that was third best. Interestingly, Nathan Eovaldi had the highest strand rate — 86.5% — with Jacob deGrom also in the top 10. Jacob Latz was 20th.

Mahle is a fly ball pitcher, and his success in keeping runners off base and from crossing home plate probably owes a decent amount to both the Ranger outfield defense and to the Shed. As you may have heard, balls didn’t carry well in the Shed in 2025, making it one of the most pitcher-friendly venues in baseball.

When we look at the splits, we can see that that definitely worked in Tyler Mahle’s favor in 2025:

Home: 10 starts, 53.2 IP, 0.84 ERA, .184/.262/.242 slash line allowed, 1 home run allowed

Road: 6 starts, 33 IP, 4.36 ERA, .270/.316/.413 slash line allowed, 4 home runs allowed

That’s amazing. Mahle — again, a fly ball pitcher — faced 210 batters at the Shed in 2025, and only one of them homered. He only allowed one more hit at home than on the road, despite facing 74 more batters at home than on the road. He never allowed more than one run at home. He allowed more than one run in every game on the road this season except one.

It makes one think that maybe it would be worth tendering the qualifying offer to Mahle — estimated to be $22 million, which is the same amount he received the past two seasons combined from the Rangers for the 19 starts he made — if you could ensure he would only pitch home games.

Having not been healthy for a full season since 2021 — the only year, its worth noting, he has pitched more than 130 major league innings — and having missed time each of the past two seasons due to shoulder issues, Mahle hits the free agent market with a bunch of health red flags to deal with. 20 years ago, maybe, a team would have looked at the 2.18 ERA and said, hey, even if he’s healthy just half the season, that’s still ace-caliber work. Now, though, teams are looking under the hood and seeing underlying metrics indicating Mahle performed like a League Average Inning Eater who didn’t eat innings. A League Average Inning Nibbler, maybe.

Also — and I’m putting this at the end because I’m not sure where else it should go — his photo this year on his B-R page made him look like a Cabbage Patch doll.