Texas Rangers Veteran Starter Rebounds After ‘Flashback’ First Inning

Texas Rangers starter Tyler Mahle said the first inning of Friday night’s game against the Tampa Bay Rays felt like a “flashback.”

Even after striking out the first two hitters of the game, he struggled for the final out, running up his pitch count only to issue a two-out walk to Junior Caminero. Then, the pitch count rose again as he finally retired Jonathan Aranda on a flyout.

Mahle (1-0) was determined not to left what happened in his first start happen again. That’s why the second inning of Friday’s 5-2 Rangers win was critical. He retired the side on three fly balls.

“I was able to get that clean inning in the second and start over,” Mahle said.

He only pitched five innings. But after failing to get out of the second inning in his first start against the Boston Red Sox last Saturday, it felt like a huge jump for the 30-year-old right-hander and for his manager, Bruce Bochy.

“It was a really nice bounce back,” Bochy said.

After that first start, Bochy said Mahle had his stuff but not the command and “that’s not like him.” His pitch count got the better of him. Mahle only gave up two hits and a run, but he walked four and reached 61 pitches before he was removed with two out in the second inning.

The second inning on Friday settled him down. He only allowed one hit, striking out five and walking two. He threw 83 pitches, 54 of which were strikes.

The Rays put the ball in play, but they only barreled one baseball in 16 at-bats against Mahle, with a hard-hit rate of 36.4%.

Mahle relied heavily on a four-seam fastball, throwing it 50% of the time, while mixing in his splitter more than 25%. The fastball nearly touched 95 mph.

That resulted in plenty of contact for Tampa Bay, but nothing that was in danger of leaving the park. Christopher Morel took one pitch for a ride in the second, but center fielder Leody Taveras caught it at the warning track.

“I gave myself a chance by living over the plate and just attacking them with my stuff,” Mahle said.

He built on the success of the Rangers’ previous two games, started by Nathan Eovaldi and Jack Leiter, respectively. Eovaldi threw a complete-game shutout while Leiter threw five innings as the Rangers ended up with back-to-back 1-0 victories for the first time in franchise history.

He was out of the game when the Rays scored in the seventh, snapping a 25-inning streak of Rangers pitching not allowing a run.

The Rangers signed Mahle to a two-year deal last offseason, with a back-loaded second year knowing Mahle needed most of 2024 to recover from Tommy John surgery. Mahle made two starts last year before right shoulder tightness put him on the shelf for the rest of the season.

Like Jacob deGrom, Mahle had a clean offseason and after a slow start, he appears to be back in the right groove. Friday was his first win since April 3, 2023, with Minnesota.

“I wasn’t even thinking about that,” Mahle said. “I was just trying not to do what I did the first outing — give us a chance to win and not screw over the bullpen.”