P2Daily: What MacKenzie Gore Can Teach Us

Prospect development can be a tricky thing. At first glance, the basis of it may seem simple — move up the minor league ladder until you make the majors.

It can be far from that, and the performance by MacKenzie Gore put on against the Pittsburgh Pirates on Sunday shows that getting from point A to point B in professional baseball is rarely a straight line.

Gore was the third overall pick back in 2017, and quickly emerged as one of the top pitching prospects in all of baseball. On MLB Pipeline he made it as high as fifth going into 2020, and then sixth the following year.

The lefty struggled, however, and did so enough that he free-fell down the prospect rankings, with troubles with his delivery caused control and velocity issues. MLB Pipeline still had him as a top 100 prospect (86th) but both Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus left him off all together.

Fast forward to Sunday, Gore pitched brilliantly, throwing seven shutout innings, allowing just two hits while walking three and striking out nine?

So, how does that affect the Pirates system?

We’ve seen some notable prospects struggle this year, notably Oneil Cruz and Travis Swaggerty at the beginning of the year, as well as 2021’s breakout player Matt Fraizer still trying to find his way in Altoona right now.

We’ve seen Nick Gonzales strike out nearly 40% of the time in April, and while he’s hitting a little better, there is still plenty of swing and miss in his game.

Po-Yu Chen is another name that was being hyped up at the beginning of the year, only for him to post an ERA of over five to this point in the season.

Baseball is about navigating through the ups and downs. If you can find some sort of consistency, to limit out the majority of those downs, you are going to be very successful in the game.

Even if some of these slumps turn into an outright bad season. One bad season isn’t going to make-or-break a potential 10+ year career in the majors, especially if they learn from their failures over the course of the year.

Failure can be the greatest teacher, in baseball and in life, if you let it. It shaped and molded Gore back into the player he once was, there shouldn’t be a reason that some of these players in the Pirates system can’t do the same.