If you have followed the Rangers’ offseason, you understand how reasonable this assumption was. Things began boldly enough, on Thanksgiving week, when the Texas swapped club stalwart Marcus Semien for Brandon Nimmo in a trade after my own heart. Past that, it was a lot of a little—tweaks here, touch-ups there. As Zach Crizer pointed out last month, none of these moves were bad, per se. Danny Jansen is a cromulent starting catcher, and several of Texas’ various bullpen additions have squint-and-you-can-see-it upside, none more so than ex-Reds closer Alexis Diaz. But there was a decided lack of ambition to the whole thing, a noticeable lack of urgency for a team whose best hitter will soon turn 32 and whose co-aces are pitching deep into their 30s on twice-repaired elbows.All of that makes Thursday’s swoop for Nationals lefty MacKenzie Gore stunning, for reasons beyond the number of prospects Texas kicked out the door to acquire the 26-year-old. The jury is still out on the first question, between a lineup with more variance than the weekend’s projected snowfall and Texas choosing to play another round of reliever roulette. Paying this cost for a pitcher with just two years of control on his deal—perhaps only one, if the inevitable MLB lockout drags on—does, however, provide a measure of reassurance about Texas’ desire to try.Because it would have been easy to cling tight to Gavin Fien, the thumping infielder whom the Rangers selected 12th overall in the 2025 MLB Draft, and cast him as a long-term accompaniment to Wyatt Langford and Sebastian Walcott in the middle of the order. For that matter, Texas also could have waited out promising righty Alejandro Rosario’s rehab from Tommy John surgery, and plugged Devin Fitz-Gerald into its parade of plucky Caucasians. According to MLB Pipeline, all three, plus add-ons Yeremy Cabrera and Abimelec Ortiz, rank among the 20 best prospects in Texas’ system.This would have been an undeniably cheaper strategy, and the post-World Series Rangers are nothing if not cost-conscious. Acquiring Gore doesn’t change that, either; he’s due a scant $5.6 million this season, in his penultimate arbitration year.Instead, Chris Young, Ross Fenstermaker, and Co. knocked down a retaining wall on a farm system already light on load-bearing structures. They did so because Gore is both a floor raiser and a ceiling raiser on a team that could use more of each. At worst he brings volume, 30 or so slightly-above-league-average starts for a team that needed a ladder from the top of its rotation (Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi) down to the bottom (Jack Leiter and one of Jacob Latz or Kumar Rocker). That doesn’t come easy on the open market, and it doesn’t come affordable, either.But there is also reason to hope for much more, and not just because Gore has already demonstrated proof of concept, making his first All-Star game in 2025 on the back of a 3.02 first-half ERA and 2.96 first-half FIP. Even when he cratered after the break, the swing-and-miss stuff remained. Gore’s 10.43 strikeouts per nine innings ranked sixth in baseball among pitchers with 150 or more innings, while his 13.3 percent swinging strike rate placed eighth. That is ace-level stuff, and Gore has the building blocks of an ace-level arsenal, too: according to the incomparable Sarah Langs of MLB.com, he was the only starting pitcher in baseball last year with four pitches with a whiff rate of 35 percent or more. (deGrom was among the quartet with three such pitches.)Far less gifted arms have made a leap in their late 20s, tamping down on the wildness and homing in on which weapons cut down hitters most efficiently. (The key, argues Eno Sarris of The Athletic, may be Gore maintaining a more horizontal shape on his curveball and leaning into a Clayton Kershaw-esque fastball/slider/curveball mix.)
