Gore is built to last. Now he needs to put it all together

ARLINGTON -- They say the best ability is availability. And in a vacuum, that’s correct.

But availability only matters so much when the production doesn’t follow.

Last winter, the Rangers sent a package of five prospects to the Nationals in return for All-Star starting pitcher MacKenzie Gore, hoping to stabilize a rotation that had been the best in baseball in 2025.

In his first season as a Ranger, the 27-year-old southpaw was more than available. He paced Major League Baseball in starts (34), becoming the first Texas pitcher to lead baseball in starts since Charlie Hough in 1987 (40 starts). Gore also ranked among Texas leaders in innings (first), strikeouts (second, 174) and wins (fourth).

But he also went 8-11 with a 4.58 ERA, and just nine of Gore’s 34 starts were quality (26.5%), the fewest in a season for him since 2023 (eight).

In short, Gore did not quite live up to his billing.

“We haven't fully dived into every specific player,” president of baseball operations Chris Young said at the Rangers’ end-of-season press conference. “We're going to do a thorough review of every player, but MacKenzie's not the only one that didn't take that step this year. We've got to assess why. Certainly, we've talked about Jack [Leiter] and Kumar [Rocker] being young pitchers that we expected major contributions from. We didn't get those either.”

The Rangers entered the season with a dynamic rotation headed by Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi, and included a trio of young starters in Gore, Leiter and Rocker. Some regression could have been expected from 2025. But the hope was that the addition of Gore could compensate for that after the pitching group identified some things to take his game to the next level.

That didn’t quite come to fruition.

“We knew there's a point at which Jacob and Evo would maybe take a step backwards,” Young reiterated. “Age, Father Time has that effect, but we also feel like we've got young pitching that would be able to take a step forward and kind of offset that. We didn't accomplish it this year. It's one of many things that we're going to continue to explore and understand.”

There were times that Gore looked every bit like the pitcher that cost five prospects, including a 3.56 ERA in six May starts and a 2.70 ERA in five August starts.

He is still a flamethrower, as evidenced by his 174 strikeouts -- tied for 11th in the AL with Tampa Bay’s Drew Rasmussen -- and his 9.05 strikeouts per nine innings, which ranked 12th. But he also had the second-highest ERA and fifth-highest WHIP (1.34) among AL qualified pitchers.

And though he was far from the only Ranger with a significant change in performance at home versus on the road, Gore’s splits were rather dramatic. He went 4-2 with a 3.43 ERA in 16 starts at home (team went 11-5), compared to a 4-9 record and a 5.73 ERA in 18 road starts. Gore's difference between his home and road ERA ranks fifth-largest (where road is higher than home) in the AL among pitchers with at least 120 innings this season. His 5.73 road ERA is the ninth-highest qualified mark in baseball.

There is a good pitcher in there with Gore -- there’s no doubt about it. Though it’s not the end-all and be-all, Gore's 0.71 difference between his FIP (3.87) and ERA (4.58) was the fifth-largest gap among qualified starting pitchers, where the FIP was better than the ERA.

There are positives to take away from this season for him. But now the Rangers, and Gore himself, will be charged with trying to make that show across the full course of a season come 2027.

“I know it's not for a lack of trying,” Young said. “MacKenzie's care factor was unbelievable. He really was such a competitor down the stretch. At one point, he took the ball on three days of rest. It's not a care factor [issue]. I know that, but the expectation is that MacKenzie is going to have a really good offseason, and that he's going to work hard, and he'll have a better year next year.”