KCB
MacKenzie Gore, P
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Scouting report
The 2020 Padres needed pitching, and it was thought entering spring training that San Diego would not hesitate to promote either Gore or Luis Patiño if they pitched well enough in the minors. Patiño got the call, as (eventually) did Ryan Weathers, but even when their staff was decimated by injury and were throwing bullpen game after bullpen game in the playoffs, Gore did not. Because the Padres' taxi squad trained at the University of San Diego (where there's no TrackMan unit) and the team did not opt-in to alternate site video sharing, other clubs do not have a real idea of how Gore looked there. The Padres acknowledge he was struggling to synch his mechanics, which seems feasible given their complexity. After 2020, Gore has now had bizarre issues in two of the last three seasons (he dealt with blisters throughout 2018), but sandwiched between them was one of the most dominant minor league seasons of the last several years, during which Gore was in the top five in minor league ERA, Swinging Strike Rate and Strikeout-to-Walk Ratio among pitchers who threw at least 100 innings. He made 15 starts in the Cal League and surrendered just nine runs. In the Cal League. Aside from the way his fastball plays (it averaged 93 in 2019, has carry and cut, and generated a 17% swinging strike rate, 16% overall), this is not a power pitcher. Gore has typically been athletic enough to maintain his very deceptive, intricate mechanics and execute his bevy of secondary pitches with consistency. His changeup has bat-missing action when it's located, his curveball and slider rely on deception and location to miss bats; neither of them is plus in a vacuum. When Gore is pitching his best, he's locating his secondary stuff where he wants. That has not been the case for a while now, including during my couple of looks at Gore during big league spring training and some of my scouting sources' looks at him in Arizona at the Padres' alt site before he broke camp to go to El Paso. I took a laissez faire approach to ranking Gore on the offseason Top 100 because it seemed plausible to me that the bizarre nature of 2020 was at the root of his turbulence, but now we're a couple months into the 2021 season (from a scouting standpoint) and his issues persist. What happened here and how does it get solved? Gore does look thicker and more physical than before; maybe a loss of flexibility, or touch and feel for release, has come with that, which is resulting in worse command. It's not as if Gore has turned into Brady Quinn; his physical development is consistent with typical player aging and maturation. It's equally as likely that this is just another example of the risk and randomness that befalls high school pitching prospects, or that we've just been wrong about Gore. If I'm looking for traits that will get a player through a rough patch like this, it's their athleticism and (insert makeup trait you like most here). I think Gore has those things and will still be a mid-rotation starter in time. He slides on the overall list near Asa Lacy and Tarik Skubal, both lefties with their own strike-throwing problems/question marks. Gore doesn't have to be added to the 40-man until this offseason and so long as his command remains an issue, I don't expect the Padres to use a 2021 roster spot on him unless they have a catastrophic string of injuries, which is obviously possible. (Alternate site)