{"id":423680,"date":"2026-01-22T21:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T21:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/423680\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T21:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T21:37:08","slug":"rangers-to-acquire-mackenzie-gore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/423680\/","title":{"rendered":"Rangers To Acquire MacKenzie Gore"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Nationals are sending left-hander MacKenzie Gore<\/a> to the Rangers for a package of five prospects, per various reports. The five players are shortstop Gavin Fien<\/a>, right-hander Alejandro Rosario<\/a>, first baseman\/outfielder Abimelec Ortiz<\/a>, infielder Devin Fitz-Gerald<\/a>\u00a0and outfielder Yeremy Cabrera<\/a>. Gore and Ortiz are the only players with 40-man spots, so no corresponding moves should be necessary with one 40-man guy going in each direction.<\/p>\n

Jon Heyman of The New York Post<\/a>\u00a0first reported Gore was headed to Texas. Jeff Passan of ESPN<\/a>\u00a0first laid out the five-for-one framework. Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News<\/a> first reported Fien\u2019s inclusion.\u00a0Spencer Nusbaum of The Washington Post<\/a> first mentioned Rosario. Grant<\/a> then reported Ortiz and Fitz-Gerald, followed by Andrew Golden of The Washington Post<\/a> adding Cabrera.<\/p>\n

Gore, 27, has been one of the more obvious trade candidates of this offseason. Back at the start of November, MLBTR\u2019s list<\/a> of the top trade candidates of the winter had him in the #1 spot. That was partly due to Gore\u2019s appeal as a potential budding ace and also the team\u2019s situation.<\/p>\n

The Nationals have been stuck in a rebuild for quite a while now. They won the World Series in 2019 but haven\u2019t finished above .500 since then. They traded players like Max Scherzer<\/a>, Trea Turner<\/a>, Kyle Schwarber<\/a> and Juan Soto<\/a> in 2021 and 2022. It was hoped that Washington could be back to relevance by now but the rebuild stalled out. Things dragged to such a degree that heads rolled. President of baseball operations Mike Rizzo and manager Dave Martinez<\/a> were both fired during last season.<\/p>\n

Paul Toboni, previously an assistant general manager with Boston, was hired to replace Rizzo as the front office leader. The general expectation in the industry is that he will get some time to turn the ship around and get the Nats into contention again, as opposed to having the pressure of trying to win immediately. Gore is only two years away from free agency, making him a trade candidate in those circumstances. As a Boras Corporation client, a contract extension was probably going to be hard to put together.<\/p>\n

On top of all that, there\u2019s Gore\u2019s track record and affordability. He was once a top prospect, getting selected third overall by the Pades in 2017. He was flipped to the Nats as part of the aforementioned Soto trade. Gore hasn\u2019t quite lived up to his potential yet, with a 4.19 earned run average in 532 1\/3 innings. However, he looked on the verge of a huge breakout for most of 2025.<\/p>\n

Last year, Gore made 19 starts for the Nats through the All-Star break. He logged 110 1\/3 innings in those with a 3.02 ERA. His 7.7% walk rate was a bit better than average and his 30.5% strikeout rate was quite strong. That strikeout rate was behind just four other qualified pitchers in baseball at that time. Tarik Skubal<\/a> led the pack at 33.4%, followed by Zack Wheeler<\/a>, Garrett Crochet<\/a> and Hunter Brown<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Gore wasn\u2019t able to stick the landing. He went on the injured list at the end of August due to shoulder inflammation. He was reinstated about two weeks later but then returned to the IL late in September due to a right ankle impingement. Around those IL stints, he tossed 49 1\/3 innings with a 6.75 ERA. That bumped his season-long ERA to 4.17.<\/p>\n

Despite the poor finish, Gore remained an enticing player. The strong run to the All-Star break showed his ceiling and it\u2019s an appealing arsenal. He averaged over 95 miles per hour with his four-seamer last year while mixing in a curveball, slider, cutter and changeup. He\u2019s also quite affordable. He\u2019s going into his second of three arbitration seasons and will be making $5.6MM this year. He\u2019ll be due another raise in 2027 before he\u2019s slated to reach free agency.<\/p>\n

The trade market for starting pitching has been robust this winter. The Orioles sent four prospects and a draft pick to the Rays for three years of Shane Baz<\/a>. The Cubs sent three players, including their top prospect, to the Marlins for three years of Edward Cabrera<\/a>. Last night, the Mets sent two of their top prospects to the Brewers for one year of Freddy Peralta<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gore\u2019s track record of success isn\u2019t quite as long as Peralta\u2019s but Gore offers an extra year of control. Baz and Cabrera offered one extra year compared to Gore but haven\u2019t shown the same kind of ace upside and both have checkered injury histories. Given the difficulty in evaluating the future outcomes of prospects, it\u2019s impossible to say which package will provide the most long-term value.<\/p>\n

For the Rangers, it\u2019s understandable that they would prefer the trade route to free agency this winter, as there have been signs that money is tight. The team and manager Bruce Bochy parted ways<\/a> at the end of last year with the club\u2019s financial uncertainty cited as playing a role in that break-up. Pitching coach Mike Maddux departed for the Angels, with some suggestion that may have been financially motivated as well.<\/p>\n

In terms of the roster, the Rangers traded three years of Marcus Semien<\/a> to get five years of Brandon Nimmo<\/a>, with Nimmo making less annually. Various<\/a> reports<\/a> from December suggested that the club couldn\u2019t even afford mid-market free agents like J.T. Realmuto<\/a> or Luis Arr\u00e1ez<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But upgrading the rotation was still on the to-do list. The club saw Merrill Kelly<\/a>, Jon Gray<\/a>, Patrick Corbin<\/a> and Tyler Mahle<\/a> all depart via free agency at season\u2019s end. They went into the winter with a strong one-two of Jacob deGrom<\/a> and Nathan Eovaldi<\/a>, but a drop-off after that. Jack Leiter<\/a> seemed to earn himself a rotation job with a 3.86 ERA last year but his strikeout and walk rates were only average-ish. Jacob Latz<\/a> had a good season in a swing role but hasn\u2019t been a full-time big league starter yet. Kumar Rocker<\/a> is a former top prospect but hasn\u2019t put it together in the majors yet.<\/p>\n

Gore immediately upgrades the group, especially if he can get back to his first-half performance in 2025. He slots into the front three with deGrom and Eovaldi, bumps Leiter to a back-end role for now and perhaps creates a competition for a fifth spot between Latz, Rocker and others.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Nationals are sending left-hander MacKenzie Gore to the Rangers for a package of five prospects, per various…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[201904,201905,201906,201907,7841,99,201908],"class_list":{"0":"post-423680","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-abimelec-ortiz","9":"tag-alejandro-rosario","10":"tag-devin-fitz-gerald","11":"tag-gavin-fien","12":"tag-mackenzie-gore","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-yeremy-cabrera"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}