The subject of trade rumors for some time, Nationals left-hander MacKenzie Gore is on his way to the Rangers in exchange for a package of five prospects, the teams announced on Thursday.
Washington’s return package is headlined by shortstop Gavin Fien, the No. 12 overall pick in the 2025 Draft and now the Nationals' No. 5 prospect per MLB Pipeline. The other prospects heading to the Nats are right-hander Alejandro Rosario (No. 11), infielder Devin Fitz-Gerald (No. 12), outfielder Yeremy Cabrera (No. 17) and first baseman/outfielder Abimelec Ortiz (No. 24).
“This ultimately was the package that we felt most comfortable with because, just generally speaking, we see high-end talent in this return, but we also see intriguing depth,” president of baseball operations Paul Toboni said. “For us, I think there are a number of ways that the ball can bounce in the future, and we can look up in however many years and we could have three, four, five good players that have come out of this.”
The potential trade buzz around Gore began at the 2025 Trade Deadline. He had the appeal of being one of the top controllable starters -- he is signed for 2026 for $5.6 million, and has one more year of arbitration after that.
Gore was named the Nationals’ Opening Day starter for the first time in 2025, his fourth MLB season and his third season in Washington after being acquired from San Diego in the 2022 Juan Soto blockbuster.
Pitching for the 96-loss Nationals, Gore went 5-15 with a 4.17 ERA in 30 starts during his age-26 season (he will turn 27 during Spring Training). He threw 159 2/3 innings, a slight dip from the previous season because of time on the injured list (right ankle impingement, left shoulder inflammation).
Gore began the year with a Nationals-record 13 strikeouts on Opening Day against the Phillies. From there, he struck out a career-high 185 batters – good for fourth among National League southpaws. He also ranked third in the NL (minimum 150 innings) with 10.4 strikeouts per nine innings, up from a 9.8 rate the previous season.
He looked like a Cy Young contender through the first two months, with a 2.87 ERA and 108 strikeouts in his first 13 starts of the season that helped him earn his first All-Star selection. Gore scuffled in the second half as the injuries flared up; he went 1-7 with a 6.75 ERA and 47 strikeouts in 11 starts after the break.
Given that rocky performance down the stretch, there was some thought that the Nats would be better off holding on to Gore in the hope that he’d rediscover that first-half form, then try to move him for a higher price at the 2026 Trade Deadline.
“If we were to have held him until the Deadline, our hope was that we [would have got] a really good version of MacKenzie until the Deadline, and then we could consider deals at the Deadline,” Toboni said. “But all of that was baked into the threshold that we set, and that bar was obviously met by the Rangers, and we decided now was the right time to execute the deal.”
The Rangers met that price by sending a five-player package highlighted by Fien, the No. 12 overall pick in last summer’s Draft.
Though Fien is already considered one of the top position-player prospects in the game, he’s also just 19 years old. The other four prospects aren’t much farther along in their professional careers, as only one (Ortiz) has even reached Double-A.
That group also includes Rosario, a pitcher who is set to undergo Tommy John surgery in the next few weeks. He’ll miss the entire 2026 season, but the hope is that he’ll be ready to go for a full ’27 campaign.
“For us, we really, really like the talent that Alejandro is,” Toboni said. “ … We thought it was a worthwhile bet to make.”
The same was once said about Gore, who throws a five-pitch mix that features a four-seamer (which averaged 95.3 mph last season), curveball, slider, changeup and cutter. He was the No. 3 overall pick by the Padres in the 2017 Draft out of Whiteville (N.C.) High School, and he was named the ‘17 Gatorade Player of the Year.
Three years ago, Gore was on the other end of this type of trade -- a promising young prospect brought in to be a key part of the franchise’s future. On Aug. 2, 2022, the Nats acquired Gore, CJ Abrams, Robert Hassell III, Luke Voit, James Wood and Jarlin Susana from the Padres for Soto and Josh Bell.
Now the Nats are hoping to turn Gore into a few more of those pieces.
“We lost 96 games last year, and to turn it around in one year and make the playoffs -- not to say it can't be done -- but it's a challenge, right?” Toboni said. “And what we want to do is make sure that we build this really strong foundation, so when we do start to push chips in, we can win for an extended period of time.”