The first few weeks of waiver wire activity are an exercise in bold prediction prognostication. A $100 FAAB bid on someone like Kyren Paris would have seemed insane just three weeks ago and may seem equally short-sighted just three weeks into the future. But right now? Those bids aren’t as crazy as they may seem. After all, landing these players early in the season means they’re actually in your lineup when the breakout happens as opposed to instead providing those precious counting stats as an offering to the waiver wire gods.

Much like how free agency works though, the high priced assets that get snagged in the first few bursts of action frequently end up providing nothing more than buyer’s remorse and the ones that were previously languishing are actually the best bang-for-your-buck of the bunch. Could that be the case with some of the names below?

Tyler Mahle – SP – TEX – 46% Yahoo, 71% CBS

Bet you didn’t know that Mahle has a season on his resume where he eclipsed 5 WAR! Okay, the reason you may not know that is because it didn’t actually happen – I’m stretching the truth just a little because he ended the 2021 season with a figure of 4.9 bWAR, which doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. Nonetheless, I’m willing to bet your internal evaluation of the potential upside in Mahle’s arm doesn’t reach those heights and while he’s unlikely to match that same peak now that he’s cresting over the hill of 30 years old, there’s still some juice to be squeezed from this orange – or in this case, former Red.

In that season with Cincinnati, two things changed for Mahle; he introduced a cutter after never throwing one previously in his professional career and he began to ramp up the use of his split finger fastball. That splitter was an absolute weapon for him en route to a breakout, allowing just a .193 average against and a 28.3% hard-hit rate – good for a Run Value of +8. The cutter also gave him his second above-average offering as a legitimate change of pace pitch, tallying a +1 rating of its own. He rode those two offerings to a very strong 210:64 K:BB with a 3.75 ERA over 180 innings, all while playing in the most notorious hitter’s park east of the Mississippi.

He was even able to sustain that initial breakout through a good portion of the following season – at least if you looked at the underlying stats. He followed his 3.75 ERA up with a 4.40 figure over 120.2 frames but that was paired with a xERA of 3.49, which was actually an improvement from his mark of 3.73 the season prior. Unfortunately, the drop in innings pitched was a portend for things to come and though he was excellent in 2023 with Minnesota, posting the best ERA (3.16), WHIP (1.05) and K/BB (5.60) of his career, his UCL blew out after five starts and just 25.2 innings pitched.

The healing time for Tommy John varies per pitcher but most tend to find their groove closer to the 24-month mark rather than the 16-month mark, when they usually find themselves back in the rotation again. Mahle didn’t look special immediately upon return, starting three games after being activated in August, with seven runs allowed over 12.2 innings, but once again his underlying metrics pointed to better results to come, with his xERA more than a full run lower at 3.75.

Three starts may be too few to draw any conclusions but how about four? Here’s Mahle’s pitching line by start so far in 2025;

1.2IP – 3H – 1ER – 4BB – 3K (BOS)

5.0IP – 1H – 0ER – 2BB – 5K (TB)

7.0IP – 2H – 1ER – 1BB – 4K (@CHC)

6.0IP – 3H – 0ER – 2BB – 9K (LAA)

For those at home who aren’t good at math, that’s a shiny 0.92 ERA and 0.86 WHIP! Obviously those are the categories we care about most for fantasy but, once more, here are some underlying stats from 2025 that suggest Mahle is worth your attention;

87.8mph AvgEV (72nd percentile)

27.7 K% (79th percentile)

34.3 Hard-Hit% (82nd percentile)

He may be closer to the 2021 version than we think!

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