MacKenzie Gore was always supposed to be a star but pitching prospects are extremely fickle. Factor in injuries and his development hasn't gone exactly as planned. Not that he hasn't been useful but if you said before 2020 that going into 2025 Gore's career stats would read 21-26 with a 4.20 ERA, 4.14 FIP and 1.422 WHIP you'd be disappointed. Those are the numbers of a #3 type starter, not an ace.
At the major league level, and really at all levels since 2020, his problem has been two-fold. Too hittable and too many walks. So while his homer rate has generally been ok and his strikeout rate generally good, guys would get on and guys would get around. His innings would be long and he just couldn't last long into games. He was just another pitcher.
This year so far we've seen a different Gore. His control is much better. He's getting ahead of batters (first pitch strike percentage is way up, getting more called strikes, and throwing in the zone more. This is giving him control of the at bats and keeping his walks down but strikeouts high. He appears to be leaning more into his curve ball, arguably his best pitch taking a bit off his fastball and a lot off his slider to make it match his change up more in speed. This is something he did in 2023 but got away from in 2024. The difference from 2023 though is he was a fastball pitcher who used a slider and curve to mix things up. Last year he really bumped up the change and now he's a four pitch pitcher, where the slider and change hit about the same speed keeping hitters more off-balance.
Pitching can be about learning what works and doesn't. And what works in the minors isn't necessarily what works in the majors. He could throw that speedball by them and then use a hammer curve and later the solid slider to finish hitters off in high school and low minors. But major league hitters weren't as easily beat. His fastball doesn't quite pop enough to rely on it to beat a hitter (see Ohtani last night) and his slider could be flat at times (see Ohtani last night). Since the curve could be fairly easily identified hitters could lay off that and handle Gore even with in general pretty good stuff. Locate the fastball though, lean more into a hard to hit curveball, make the slider able to be confused with a tumbling change-up, well you start to see what happens.
I'm not sure this is something that will last. It hasn't been perfect as his start in Toronto was full of hits. And we've seen pitchers run through a couple good starts. Hell, we've seen them run through a couple good months. But if you could spell out what you wanted to see from Gore early this is it. Honestly looking forward now to his next start to see if we can get more confirmation that he'pitching different and that it makes a difference.
4 comments:
Encouraging!
"He could throw that speedball by them..."
Nice Springsteen pull.
Gore has looked very good and he's done it against 3 above average offenses. He's 2nd among 80 qualified pitchers in K% and 3rd in K%-BB%. All three of his opponents were above average taking walks (esp the Phillies) and all three were average or better at avoiding strikeouts. He has an ERA- of 56 and a FIP- of 67 while facing opponents with a cumulative wRC+ of approximately 120. That's excellent.
And, yes, opening day was helped by shadows. But that counts too. The standard for excellence is not a true talent FIP below zero. That was a rare gem from any pitcher.
Taking the three games as a whole, nothing looks fluky. Normal HR/FB rate. The LOB% looks a bit lucky and the BABIP looks unlucky, pretty much cancelling out. The stuff metrics are solid. The eye test has looked good. He's earned his results so far and, so far, his results are worthy of an SP1.
I'll also say that, while 17 innings over 3 starts is a ridiculously small sample and we should all recognize giant error bars, I do think it crosses the threshold into being a sample in the first place. It's a good place to take an early look and see what the trends are. And Gore is trending very well indeed.
Despite my username, I'm feeling actually a bit optimistic about Gore for exactly the reason you laid out, Harper: pitch mix. When you go back and look at his scouting evaluations, everyone talks about how pretty much any pitch in his arsenal can be a put-out pitch. But when you combine his control issues with the improved opponent quality, he never lived up to the "four plus-pitch arsenal" that people were drooling over.
So it's not necessarily the spin rates or whatever that are driving this success, it's the pitch mix. To be completely hyperbolic, he's shifting from a power pitcher a la Randy Johnson to an intelligent pitcher a la Maddux. Make two of your pitches close in speed but break in opposite directions, make your fastball a little slower and the change/curve a little faster to make each harder to identify, attack the zone early to get ahead, etc.
Obviously a small sample size still, but the timing of it (right after the offseason) makes me think it was a conscious decision (one that I suspect Doolittle had something to do with)
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