This story was excerpted from Kennedi Landry’s Rangers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
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.”