GORE MORE OF OPTION?
Padres’ young lefty trying to impress if Lamet can’t go early
The Padres are no longer the kind of team that necessarily needs its top pitching prospect to hurry up and be what he might be.
But it wouldn’t hurt, there never being enough pitching and all.
And against whatever longish odds he faces with the Padres having added Yu Darvish and Blake Snell and Joe Musgrove to their starting rotation, MacKenzie Gore’s intention is to be in a Padres uniform by April 1.
“I will be working to be ready for the majors,” he said Thursday afternoon. It could happen.
The Padres seem to increasingly be thinking Dinelson Lamet won’t start the season as they work to ensure his elbow is sufficiently strengthened for him to be around come October.
If it’s how you finish that matters, Gore looked Thursday like he might have a chance to make his debut sooner than later.
The left-hander’s past year may have been metaphorically encapsulated in his Cactus League outing against the Texas Rangers.
A rough start followed by a strong bounce back.
Gore couldn’t record a third out in the first inning before the inning was “rolled” with his having thrown 24 pitches. At that point, he had walked the bases full around a strikeout and long fly ball. He missed early with his fastball and almost all throughout with his secondary pitches.
The positive was that his fastball was as live as ever, running 94-96 mph and getting five swings and misses in the first inning.
As Taylor Williams began to warm up in the bullpen, Gore took the mound for the bottom of the second inning. It was finished nine pitches later with him having retired three Rangers batters on a strikeout, fly ball to the track in left field and a grounder.
Both curveballs he threw in the second inning were called strikes. He also got another swing and miss on a 94 mph fastball that Nate Lowe swung through for the first out.
“That first inning was ugly,” Gore said. “I guess I just settled in. The second inning was much better.”
Gore threw just nine strikes in the first inning, which manager Jayce Tingler was inclined to attribute to adrenaline.
“First time in a stadium game in a long period of time,” Tingler said. “There is naturally a lot of emotions built up. To shake those off, he settled in to the second.”
Gore was greeted in front of the Padres dugout by a clapping Tingler. The manager gave a shout before fist bumping the kid who turned 22 on Feb. 24.
Yes, Gore is that young. It seems he has been one of the team’s next great hopes for longer, especially to a fanbase accustomed to only having what might be in the future to be excited about because what was in front of them in San Diego was so hopeless.
Gore is roundly considered the best pitching prospect in baseball, but he is less than four years removed from being drafted out of high school. And he has essentially had just two seasons of professional development, last year’s minor league campaign having been lost to COVID.
He was among the young players who spent last season working at the Padres’ alternate site. There, he struggled.
“I was just tested in a lot of ways I’ve never been tested before,” Gore said Thursday. “I’ve never not been able to just go let loose every five or six days and play a game. It was definitely challenging mentally, and it was definitely good for me.”
Depending on who was saying so, his trouble throwing strikes last year was somewhere between perplexing and somewhat troubling.
Piecing together information from various sources, it seems Gore picked up a detrimental habit in how he released the ball, which affected the liveliness and command that had always distinguished his pitches. For a good portion of the summer, through simulated games at the University of San Diego and the occasional morning throwing session on the mound Petco Park, he could not consistently find the strike zone.
The team felt he had taken to a fix by the start of the postseason. Had the Padres advanced past the Dodgers in the National League Division Series, the tentative plan was to put Gore on the roster.
In that the Padres called up 20-year-old Luis Patiño 12 days into the regular season and, in the postseason, 20year-old Ryan Weathers, there was consternation about what was “wrong ” with Gore.
While the Padres invested many hours to getting Gore right, there was hardly the same level of concern inside the organization as there was outside.
“It might have been worrisome at some point,” pitching coach Larry Rothchild said. “But with his personality, his makeup, everybody knew he would come through it.”
That is essentially what was said by multiple sources all last summer and into the fall. The testimonies about Gore’s mental toughness have been abundant since the Padres made him the third overall pick in the 2017 draft.
This is the guy who in his first spring training knocked down Fernando Tatis Jr. with a fastball high and tight the first time they faced each other.
To a person, Padres people say there is not the slightest worry about Gore anymore. This is a player the organization assesses on the same level as Tatis. As in, they believe he can be a perennial Cy Young contender, an All-Star, more.
“They are guys you build around,” said one member of the front office.
Gore has pitched 183 innings in the minors, fewer than 22 of them above Single-A. That’s about the same total number of minor league innings Chris Paddack had when he made his big-league debut in 2019. It is about half as many Double-A innings. And Paddack had been in professional baseball for five years, and several personnel people say he was a more refined pitcher in 2019 than Gore is now.
The Padres believe Gore’s competitive nature did not respond well to playing “games” against people in the same uniform at USD last year.
“It had been a long time since I started a game against another team. It was a lot of fun.” MacKenzie Gore • Padres pitching prospect
On Thursday, he referred to trying to “win games” last year, but said, “I did not do a great job of that. … There is no excuse. I just wasn’t very good at it.”
The layoff and return to actual game action lent a little extra significance to this spring for Gore, who on Thursday was pitching for the first time since March 11. He had impressed in his second Cactus League outing that night before spring training was halted the next day due to COVID.
So, it was in a way just good for the Padres to see the leg kick that is already so recognizable on a mound while competing.
It certainly was special to Gore.
“You appreciate it when you get to play a game,” he said, referring to what he endured in 2020. “… It felt great. It had been a long time since I started a game against another team. It was a lot of fun. Warming up, I was like, ‘Man, it’s been a long time.’ … Definitely want to be better next time.”
At the least, what he did Thursday showed last year likely was a speed bump on the way to what the Padres expect to be a long road ahead for Gore in the major leagues.
“Really, there (was) minimal concern there,” Rothschild said. “It was just such a weird situation. … As much as we’d love it to be for everybody, it just doesn’t always go the way you plan it. That doesn’t mean anything else except his time will come. When he’s ready to pitch in the major leagues, it will be pretty obvious.”