MacKenzie Gore's inclusion on top trade candidate list puts Rangers folly in a whole new light

There may be no better symbol for how MacKenzie Gore's first season in Arlington went than the final game of the Texas Rangers' season. Gore took the ball on short rest, but managed just 2 1/3 innings before he was pulled with the season on the line. Gore might have been able to go longer, but it was clear that the quick hook was due to Skip Schumaker's lack of trust that he'd actually come through.

Gore's 4.58 ERA was the fifth-worst mark among all qualified starters. That's not exactly what the Rangers thought they were going to get when they sent a whopping five prospects to the Washington Nationals for his services.

To be fair, it wasn't all bad. The 27-year-old had stretches where he did pitch like the player Texas thought it was getting. He was durable, too, making a league-leading 34 starts and taking the ball on short rest several times, not just on the final day of the season, typically saving the Rangers in the process.

Ultimately, however, Chris Young took a gamble on a player with the pedigree of the No. 3 overall pick in the draft, but unfortunately one who never reached the performance that is expected from a player picked that high. Gore had always been a guy who hovered around a 4.00 ERA, and in 2026 he took a step back.

Now MLB Trade Rumors has him listed as one of the offseason's top 40 trade candidates, ranking 17th on a list that tries to balance both value and likelihood of being moved. Really, all it does, though, is further highlight the Rangers' failure.

MacKenzie Gore being considered a top trade candidate shows how the Rangers really failed

The obvious failure of the Gore trade was the fact that he was supposed to bolster a rotation that put forth a league-leading 3.41 ERA in 2025 and get Texas back into the postseason. He was supposed to form a three-headed monster with Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi.

That obviously didn't come to pass, but there's a greater reason why the trade was a failure. The Rangers paid such a high price because he had two seasons of team control remaining. What should have happened in a perfect world is seeing him emerge as a true ace in 2026, and then extending him this offseason so that he could lead the rotation in the future.

Eovaldi and deGrom are free agents after the 2027 season. They're both getting long in the tooth, are expensive, and might not be fits to keep in Arlington beyond next year. Gore, theoretically, could have led the youth movement as a front-of-the-rotation starter in his prime. Had he shown those traits last season, we'd see him as a candidate for a massive extension this offseason. Instead, he's just another arm heading for free agency next winter, creating more questions than answers.

After the rumors swirling around deGrom at the trade deadline, we could see the Rangers revisit dealing him this offseason. The 38-year-old still has a full no-trade clause, but in the calm of the winter and with a clearer-eyed vision of the club's future, he may be more amenable to waiving his veto power in order to find a new home.

While that might seem to make Gore important and less likely to be traded, there's a flip side. If deGrom moves on, it could trigger a greater rebuild. At that point, Gore won't fit the timeline. Texas isn't going to commit serious money to extend him now after such an awful showing, meaning the best way to extract value from him is to move him to a starting-pitching-needy contender that maybe doesn't have the financial might to shop at the top of the free-agent market.

In doing so, the Rangers would be selling Gore for pennies on the dollar. They're not going to get anything near what they gave up to get him, but if he's going to walk after 2027, there's a case to be made for getting something back.

And that's the real failure. The vision was Gore becoming the piece to pivot from the present to the future, all while keeping the competitive window open. Instead, he's a distressed asset that presents an underwater value for the club. It was a big swing, and it's now a horrible miss.

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