Wednesday, July 02

As Tyler Mahle went through his grueling Tommy John rehab, first with the Twins and then with the Rangers, there were any number of people that stood with him as he worked to get back into form. 

Mahle, through his first eight games, is enjoying one of the best stretches of his career. Almost exactly two years removed from that Tommy John surgery, the right-hander has posted a 1.48 ERA in 42 2/3 innings, which is tied for second best in MLB behind Max Fried’s 1.05 ERA in 51 2/3 innings entering Saturday. 

Mahle credited his wife, Ashley, for being by his side through all of it.

“It's a testament to the work that I've done over the years and the people that have been along that ride with me,” Mahle said of his hot start. “I had all that time away from the game, not pitching for practically two years. That’s a lot of time to try to figure out who you are and what you're good at. 

“My wife, she was sticking with me through the hard times. Obviously, she's been my rock behind me. Even when I was home that whole year, she was by my side, she gets it. I mean, she was an athlete, she knows what it’s like.” 

Ashley Mahle is a former collegiate athlete herself, playing volleyball at Louisville and beach volleyball at Jacksonville State. She understands the grind of this lifestyle the two live together now. 

It’s gotten even more hectic over the last couple of years, as the Mahles welcomed their first child, a baby boy named Huck, on Feb. 9, 2023, and another baby girl in ‘24. 

But having two athletes in the household certainly makes things easier. 

“She absolutely gets me, she gets my lifestyle,” Mahle said. “A lot of our life revolves around sports. So that means her life, and that means the kids' lives. It's just easy with her. If I've got to go early to the field or something, she does a good job in understanding it all. Obviously, it's tough when I leave and she's at home with two kids, but she totally gets it. That makes it easy on me, and then it just makes it easier at home with the way our life is. So I think it helps you know that she understands that her life used to be like everything used to revolve around volleyball, right?”

Asked jokingly if Tyler and Ashley will have one baseball-playing kid and one volleyball-playing kid, Tyler said neither. 

“Two golfers,” he said with a nod. “We could just do it forever, right? We can do it until they grow up and we're older. We can't play baseball with them forever, but you can play golf with them.”

“I change bats a lot, I like bats. Boonie was talking about when he played, he was getting like six delivered every series. And by the end of the season, he’d have like 200 bats. He knew the ounces and the grains. We just had a detailed talk about bats. It sounds crazy, but, I don't know, it was something really relatable to me and definitely helped having a common ground when building a relationship.

“We have a lot of very mentally stable hitters on this team that don't switch bats. They're consistent, so their bats are all the same. I've related with other people that switched bats a lot and it’s cool to have Boonie to talk about different models and the ones that his teammates use, and stuff like that. No one talks sticks here. It was a fun conversation for me.” -- Rangers designated hitter Joc Pederson, on his affinity for bats and a conversation with new hitting coach Bret Boone 

On Wednesday, I held an Ask Me Anything on Reddit with Rangers fans at r/TexasRangers. This mailbag features the most important questions and answers from there. The full AMA can be read here, with additional questions about movies and music and everything else that’s now baseball related.

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