At 41-61, the Washington Nationals are barreling toward their worst record since 2022, which is not where you want to be three years after trading a generational talent like Juan Soto. The slow-moving rebuild cost longtime GM Mike Rizzo (and manager Dave Martinez) his job earlier this month. Interim GM Mike DeBartolo made the No. 1 pick in the amateur draft a few days later.
“I’m looking to keep the young core group of our best players together,” DeBartolo said earlier this month when asked about his trade deadline strategy (via MASN). “Certainly in my job, if someone calls, you always listen to what they have to say. But trading away our really high quality young players is not something I’m looking to do right now.”
The Soto trade returned a franchise-altering haul — shortstop CJ Abrams, lefty MacKenzie Gore, outfielder James Wood, plus more — and it’s understandable that DeBartolo wants to keep them together. At the same time, he has to listen to offers. You never know when a team will blow you away and offer you, well, something like the Nationals received for Soto.
Gore, 26, earned his first All-Star Game selection this season and he’s established himself as one of the game’s top young pitchers. If he’s not an ace yet, he’s on that trajectory. Trading Gore is “not a focus of mine,” DeBartolo said over the weekend, but teams are calling, and you might as well hear them out. A front office isn’t doing its job if it’s not at least listening.
The Nationals won the World Series in 2019 and only the Rockies have more losses since. The fan base didn’t even get to have a victory lap year in 2020 because of the pandemic. Nationals fans have been dealt a rough hand and trading Gore, one of the team’s few bright spots, would be another kick while they’re down.
That all said, there are baseball reasons to consider trading Gore before next Thursday’s deadline. Here are three.
1. He’s closer to free agency than you may realize
The Nationals traded Soto when he was 2 ½ years away from free agency. Do you know how far away from free agency Gore is right now? 2 ½ years. He’s at the exact same service time level as Soto when the Nationals determined they couldn’t keep him and were best off trading him. Not only that, but Washington is likely to finish with their worst record since the Soto trade this year.
Keeping Gore and signing him to a long-term extension would be the preferred outcome for the Nationals but it simply might not be possible. Gore, like Soto, is a Scott Boras client, and Boras like to take top clients into free agency. Gore is on track to hit the open market as a 28-year-old top-end starter after the 2027 season. He’s pacing to be a $300 million pitcher. An extension may not be doable, which was a factor in the decision to trade Soto.
2. It’s a seller’s market
Pitching is always in demand and there aren’t many high-end starters on the trade market right now. Sandy Alcantara is having the worst season of his career. So is Zac Gallen. Others like Merrill Kelly and Seth Lugo are very good pitchers who are maybe best equipped to start Game 2 or 3 of the postseason series rather than Game 1. Frontline starters are in short supply.
Any team bold enough to make a top-flight starter available would control the pitching market. Gore is excellent, he’s dirt cheap, and you can keep him through 2027. How many teams could use a pitcher like that? Pretty much all of them. Not only would contenders (Cubs, Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, etc.) get involved, so would teams that aren’t in the race but hope to be next year (looking at you, Orioles).
The bidding war would be fierce and could push the return beyond reasonable expectations. All it takes is one desperate team to put a package on the table that blows everyone out of the water and leaves us pundits calling it a massive overpay. The trade market is ripe for a team to make their cheap, controllable ace available, and reap the rewards by getting a return far above what we would normally expect.
3. His track record is not that long
It was only four years ago that Gore, then with the Padres, was battling a moderate case of the yips. He went from being the consensus top pitching prospect in baseball in 2020 to off top-100 prospect lists entirely in 2022. Gore deserves a tremendous amount of credit for rebuilding himself and coming out the other side as one of the top pitchers in the sport.
Beyond that, Gore has been this — an above-average starter — for about 30 starts, give or take. Go back to last Aug. 17 and he was sitting on a 4.66 ERA and walking close to one out of every 10 batters. It wasn’t too long ago that we were sitting here wondering when Gore would take the leap he has this season, if ever. He looked more like a solid mid-rotation guy than a stud.
There are some red flags in his not-too-distant past, plus, you know, he’s a pitcher. Pitchers get hurt, unfortunately. It’s possible that Gore’s trade value will never be higher than it is right now. Teams will pay big for three postseason runs of a great pitcher. Hold Gore until next year, and trade partners will pay less for only two postseason runs of him. That’s easy math.
Conditions are ripe for the Nationals to get a massive haul for Gore, who’s having a breakout year more than he is building on an established track record of dominance. Personally, I think the Nationals should keep him and focus on improving the team around him, but DeBartolo has to at least listen to what’s out there. And if something makes sense, he’ll have to act.
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