Perfectionist Gore ready to reach new heights

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – In a sport full of perfectionists, MacKenzie Gore rises above the fray. The Nationals left-hander expects the absolute best from himself, beats himself up when he doesn’t live up to that standard and always seeks improvement no matter how well his last start went.

This isn’t a recently learned trait for Gore. He didn’t just become this way as he rose up the baseball ladder. It predates everything.

“I think I’ve kind of always had that since I was 12, 14 years old,” he said. “That’s just the way I was raised. It’s just the way it should be. I think everyone should have super-high expectations. That’s just trying to get the most out of what you’re capable of.”

This mindset has worked both to and against Gore’s benefit since he joined the Nationals as part of the Juan Soto blockbuster trade in August 2022. It helps that he demands excellence from himself, and he’s got a half-dozen or so starts over the last two years that stack up with any in recent club history. It also hurts when he’s not going well, something that was all too evident last summer when he slogged his way through a lengthy pitching slump that threatened to ruin a strong season.

That slump took place over a stretch of eight starts from July 6 through Aug. 17. During that span, Gore went 1-4 with a 7.71 ERA, allowing a whopping 50 hits and 25 walks in only 35 innings. His season ERA skyrocketed from 3.47 to 4.66.

At times, the lefty looked lost and sounded defeated, the weight of a slump becoming too much for his perfectionist mind to accept.

“It’s one of those things where, if you think about the problem, it probably makes it worse,” he admitted. “But you do have to figure it out. I was able to do that, and I pitched well the last six weeks and felt good going into the offseason.”

Yes, he did. Gore’s breakthrough moment came with back-to-back gems against elite opponents. He held the Braves to one run over six innings on Aug. 23. Then he held the Yankees to two runs over six innings, striking out six in an Aug. 28 win before a large and boisterous crowd at Nationals Park.

He cruised from that point on, going 3-1 with a 1.55 ERA and 0.910 WHP over his final seven starts. That allowed him to end the season with a 3.91 ERA and 181 strikeouts (both the best by any Nats qualified starter since 2019). And it allowed him to head home for the winter with a positive mindset.

“I think he’s learned a lot,” manager Davey Martinez said. “Not about who he was, but what he can be. That’s the big difference going into spring training. Him starting off the way he did, going through that rough spurt, bouncing back and finishing the way he did, I think he understands now who he can really be on a consistent basis.”

How did Gore figure out what had gone wrong? By finally recognizing he didn’t need to obsess over his struggles, but rather trust he knew how to be a good pitcher. He relied on his fastball to get ahead in counts, turned to the rest of his repertoire to put away hitters and kept his pitch count down so he could go deeper in games.

“Obviously with my personality, that six-week stretch bothered me," he said. "But I did go back and look at it, and tried to figure out why it happened. You break everything down after the season and ask: The rest of the season vs. those six weeks, what was the difference? And it was definitely a big difference numbers-wise, but it wasn’t a big difference in what we were doing. It was just some small things we had to clean up. And once we did clean it up, I was a pretty good player the last six weeks.”

At his best, Gore is as good as anybody in the league. In seven of his starts last season, he allowed one or fewer runs while striking out eight or more batters. Only six big leaguers did that more times: Chris Sale, Blake Snell, Dylan Cease, Paul Skenes, Freddy Peralta and Garrett Crochet.

The problem is consistency. Gore gave up five or more runs in fewer than five innings in five starts last season. Only four big leaguers did that more times: Miles Mikolas, Kenta Maeda, Matt Waldron and Kyle Hendricks.

As always, it’s about limiting the damage, avoiding the blowup starts, not letting himself get into slumps.

“You kind of figure out what the good ones do. Obviously, they’re really great. But they do it over and over and over,” Gore said. “Sometimes, it takes some time to figure it out.”

He turns 26 later this month, and he’s got 75 games and three years of major league service time under his belt now. He believes the time has come – for himself and for the Nationals as a whole – to reach full potential.

“I think for the guys who have been here a few years, it’s not just about me playing to my capabilities. It’s about everyone in the building doing that,” he said. “The talent’s real here. We may not be 28-30 years old, but we’re as talented as anybody. When we don’t beat ourselves, we win games.”