MacKenzie Gore will remain on bereavement leave and miss his next scheduled turn through the rotation.
Gore, who would’ve been on turn to start Tuesday against the Mets, went on bereavement leave Thursday. Manager Davey Martinez said today the left-hander won’t be back in time to make that start and instead will be pushed to a later date.
“When he comes back, we’ll figure out where he’s at,” Martinez said. “I want him to go through his routine, and then we’ll figure out where to plop him. If we have to back off a couple guys a little bit, that would actually be a good thing if we can put him in the middle of those guys. We’ll see how he feels when he gets back.”
Though the circumstances that led to this weren’t intended, the Nationals did want to find a way to give Gore some extra time off down the stretch of his first full big league season. The 24-year-old has totaled 132 1/3 innings, most in his professional career by a significant amount. His previous high was 101 innings in 2019 as a minor leaguer with the Padres. He totaled only 87 innings between the majors and minors last season while missing time with an elbow injury.
Gore last pitched Tuesday in Toronto, allowing one run over five innings but needing 106 pitches to do it. With Patrick Corbin and Joan Adon now scheduled to start a two-game series against the Mets that includes off-days on both the front and back ends, Gore will wind up getting at least 10 days of rest before potentially returning to the mound next weekend against the Dodgers.
“It’s unfortunate, because of what he has to go through,” Martinez said. “But it does help us a little bit that we can give him some days off to recover. And then when he comes back, we’ll plop him in when we feel like he’s ready.”
* Tanner Rainey made back-to-back appearances for Triple-A Rochester earlier in the week, a key hurdle in his recovery from Tommy John surgery. The right-hander isn’t quite ready to be activated off the 60-day injured list, though.
Rainey threw 22 pitches Wednesday against Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, then 19 pitches the following night. It’s the first time he pitched back-to-back days since his elbow ligament replacement surgery in August 2022.
There don’t appear to be many more items for Rainey to cross off his checklist, but he’s not quite there yet.
“I talked to him today. He’s going to continue to throw down there and get a few more outings,” Martinez said. “He’s feeling better. He was a little achy after his last outing, but he said he thought that was going to be the norm. We all thought that. He’s getting closer, but we want to make sure all that achiness and stuff goes away before he gets an opportunity to come back here.”