Gore needs to get results
Promising young lefty allows 3 earned runs in season debut
The last of MacKenzie Gore’s 101 pitches Monday afternoon should be what’s boxed up and preserved for starts in the coming months. Maybe then, it’ll come to close the seventh inning rather than to record the first out of the sixth. He has more efficiency to learn, more consistency to find. But even in a somewhat uneven outing to open the home portion of the Washington Nationals’ schedule, this much is obvious: He can do things with a baseball most pitchers simply can’t.
“It’s just pure arm talent,” fellow starter Josiah Gray said.
So that’s what the 2024 season is about for Gore, the Nationals’ gifted but developing left-hander: taking that arm talent and squeezing results from it. His stat line from his first start of the season —5 innings pitched, five hits and two walks allowed that led to three earned runs, to go with six strikeouts — was decidedly middling. His stuff is not. The trick: Getting the outcomes to match the ability about 30 more times.
“I think the stuff ’s better than it was a year ago,” Gore said after the Nats’ 8-4 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates. “I just got to execute a little better going forward. But I like where we’re going.”
That last pitch is reason enough. It came as the Nats trailed 2-1 in the top of the sixth, and just after Pirates catcher Henry Davis had led off the frame with a double. The hitter was Oneil Cruz, the Pirates’ freakishly large shortstop. Gore began the at-bat with a slider that missed the zone, then fired four straight fastballs — three of them at 97 mph or harder — to get the count to 2-2.
“His fastball, obviously,”
veteran lefty Patrick Corbin said. “I mean, 97 from the left side is just tough to hit.”
“There’s a little bit of adrenaline,” manager Dave Martinez said.
But here’s why Gore is so intriguing. After those four straight four-seam fastballs — one that Cruz swung through, one that missed the zone and two that Cruz fouled off — came what the hitter can’t really prepare for if he has to protect against the heat.
“He’s got four electric pitches,” catcher Riley Adams said. “And he can use them in any count. I think that’s what makes him so effective.”
Gore’s strikeouts to that point had come on an array of pitches — Andrew McCutchen and Edward Olivares swinging through sliders (at 93 and 92 mph) in the first; McCutchen looking at a fastball in the third, old friend Michael A. Taylor on a curveball and Alika Williams on a fastball in the fourth. And that discounts the handful of change-ups he threw, a pitch he has devoted himself to over the winter “and could really be a plus pitch for him,” Corbin said. What’s a hitter to do? “When he’s on and he’s right,” Gray said, “he’s one of the best in the game.”
Stuff-wise, that may well be. Results-wise, it’s still to come. Monday was just the 41st start of Gore’s career, and it’s important to remember he turned just 25 in February. Last year, his first full, healthy campaign in the majors, the Nats shut him down after 27 starts and 136 ⅓ innings. This year, part of the progress is merely that the shackles are off.
“He just needs the experience of being out there, competing and trusting his stuff — which I think he does,” said Corbin, who lives near Gore in Florida during the offseason and has helped mentor him since his arrival in the Juan Soto trade of 2022. “He does all the right things in preparation to go out there. It’s just a matter of time till he starts building. His stuff plays as well as anybody’s. Who knows what he can do with 30-plus starts?”
With any luck, the Nats are about to find out.
“We saw what he can do when he’s really good,” Martinez said. “He’s got to limit damage when he’s out there. I saw a different guy this spring — as far as attacking the zone, staying composed. We need to see that from him every time.”
There were elements of all that against the Pirates Monday. A single and four-pitch walk in the first were followed by the consecutive strikeouts of McCutchen and Olivares to get out of the inning. Three hits and a hit batter within the first five hitters of the second were followed by a grounder and flyout to limit the damage. From those last two hitters in the second to the start of the sixth, he didn’t allow a hit.
He might be an ace — at some point. At this point, he’s still learning.