ARLINGTON -- On Monday afternoon, at a Rangers Winter Warm-up stop, Cody Bradford, unprompted, repeated a company line often echoed by Texas' president of baseball operations Chris Young: “You can never have too much starting pitching.”
Young heard the call.
The Rangers have acquired left-handed pitcher MacKenzie Gore from the Nationals in exchange for a package of prospects, the club announced on Thursday. Texas was in need of more rotational depth and paid a hefty price to acquire it with a package headlined by 2025 first-round Draft pick Gavin Fien.
TRADE BREAKDOWN
Rangers receive: LHP MacKenzie Gore
Nationals receive: SS Gavin Fien (now Washington's No. 5 prospect per MLB Pipeline), RHP Alejandro Rosario (No. 11), INF Devin Fitz-Gerald (No. 12), OF Yeremy Cabrera (No. 17) and 1B/OF Abimelec Ortiz (No. 24).
Gore is under club control through the 2027 season.
“Certainly, pitching has been a focus for us, and we feel like adding a talented pitcher at the level of MacKenzie makes us a really good pitching staff,” Young said. “I put our starting rotation up there with some of the best rotations in baseball, and we’re just excited for our team in pursuit of another World Series championship. That's been our goal all along. That's what we feel like this move allows us to work towards. While the work doesn't end, we feel very good about this offseason and where we stand a few weeks before Spring Training.”
A 2025 All-Star, Gore went 5-15 across 30 starts for the 96-loss Nationals last year, posting a 4.17 ERA in 159 2/3 innings. He had a 3.02 ERA in 110 1/3 innings before the break but struggled to a 6.75 ERA in 49 1/3 innings afterward.
Gore also had career highs in strikeouts (185), quality starts (14) and bWAR (3.0) across his 30 starts last season. Had he qualified for the ERA title -- he was 2 1/3 innings short -- he would have ranked third in the NL with a 10.43 K/9 rate (min. 30 starts).
“He dealt with a little shoulder fatigue in the second half but still had a great season on the whole,” Young said. “We feel very good about our medical group, our pitching group, and our ability to get him through a full season and help get the best out of him to where he's finishing strong. Our goal is to help him put together a complete season. He fits all the criteria of great starting pitchers, and we're excited to help him realize that.”
The southpaw has a dynamic five-pitch mix that includes a mid-90s fastball, a curveball, a slider, a changeup and a cutter, but he has been inconsistent in the second half throughout his career (3.87 ERA in first half vs. 4.91 in the second half).
He joins a rotation that was the best in baseball in 2025 (3.41 ERA), headed by co-aces Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi. Some combination of Jack Leiter, Kumar Rocker and Jacob Latz will likely round out the back end of the rotation on Opening Day.
If nothing else, this move confirms the Rangers’ desire to compete in 2026. Rumors have swirled throughout the offseason following the trade of franchise pillar Marcus Semien, but Young and Co. have repeatedly insisted that they want to be in contention, despite what has been a slight decrease in payroll.
Trading a package of prospects for a young starting pitcher hammers that point home.
“Any time you have an opportunity to acquire a 27-year-old All-Star, left-handed starter like MacKenzie Gore, you gotta go in,” said general manager Ross Fenstermaker. “You've got to do that. Kudos to the scouting group for bringing [those prospects] into the organization, [farm director] Josh Bonifay and his crew for developing them and for putting us in a position to make this trade.”