Who is MacKenzie Gore?

The Padres are already as pitching-rich as any team at the big league level, but another potential ace waits in the wings. Southpaw MacKenzie Gore is MLB Pipeline’s top-rated pitching prospect and has already tasted plenty of success as a former Gatorade National Player of the Year as a senior in high school in 2017 and as MLB Pipeline’s Pitcher of the Year in ‘19. Gore was drafted third overall in 2017 by the Padres, and he could be knocking on the door of the Padres’ vaunted starting rotation pretty soon.

Here’s what to know about Gore, baseball’s No. 6 overall prospect per MLB Pipeline.

FAST FACTS
MLB organization: Padres
Birthdate: Feb. 24, 1999 (Age 22 in 2021)
Primary position: LHP
Height/weight: 6-foot-2, 197 lbs.
Bats/throws: left/left
Hometown: Whiteville, N.C.
School: Whiteville (N.C.) High School
Drafted: 3rd overall, 2017 (by SD)

You’ll instantly fall in love with his windup

Warren Spahn, Juan Marichal, Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, Dontrelle Willis … MacKenzie Gore? Yes, Gore looks like he could be the heir apparent to join MLB’s all-time leg-kick rotation. He offers the hitter a totally unique look by holding the ball up high and raising his right leg way up to meet it before he throws a pitch -- and one of baseball’s most beloved high-steppers has already taken notice.

Gore has featured that leg kick since he was in junior high, and he doesn’t know why he started pitching that way. But he was already so good that his coaches decided to leave him alone.

"I'm looking at a kid and I've never seen somebody throw like that," said Gore’s high school pitching coach, Fielding Hammond, “but he's throwing strikes and it's coming out of his hand pretty good, pretty sharp.

"I wasn't about to change anything."

Says Gore, “I don’t know why I started it, but I was able to repeat it.”

His high school ERA was 0.19

No, that’s not a misprint: Gore allowed 16 total earned runs across his entire high school career and paired 158 strikeouts with five walks. We’ll do the quick math for you -- that comes out to a mind-boggling 31.6 strikeout-to-walk ratio, or nearly six times better than Chris Sale’s all-time record 5.4 K/BB career mark. Gore simply didn’t experience failure on the mound in high school, finishing with a perfect 11-0 record and three North Carolina 1A state championships. Gore naturally won North Carolina’s state championship MVP award all three years, but he gave his third MVP trophy away to a teammate who had picked up a walk-off single to secure the title.

This may be the last season that Padres pitchers pick up a bat and step to the plate, but Gore could be up for the challenge. On top of those insane mound numbers, he also hit .478 with 29 RBIs in 90 high school at-bats.

Watch out for his pickoff move

Gore’s appearance in the 2019 SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game lasted just one clean inning, but it did offer a glimpse of another potential skill. That sky-high leg kick from the left side can make him a tough read for baserunners, as Angels prospect Jo Adell found out the hard way when Gore picked him off easily.

Shades of Andy Pettitte? It’s too soon to say that, but if Gore can mix up his times to the plate, it might be awfully hard to tell when he’s coming home with the ball or when he’s throwing to first base.

His favorite player is a rather famous North Carolina lefty

Yes, look away Padres fans -- that would be Madison Bumgarner, the D-backs and former Giants ace. Gore has said he’d like to emulate the way Bumgarner “competes and wants the ball in the biggest games,” so if the youngster replicates any of Bumgarner’s mastery in the postseason, the Friar faithful will certainly live with that. Gore and Bumgarner actually already met back in 2016, before the Padres added Gore to their farm system.

Speaking of N.C.: Gore is from an emerging baseball hotbed

Columbus County, N.C., is a fairly rural part of the state with a population of roughly 56,000, but Draft watchers might be familiar with the area by now. Not only did Gore dominate at Whiteville; fellow left-hander Jagger Haynes, the Padres’ fifth-round selection in 2020, hails from nearby Cerro Gordo and has already ascended to No. 13 on MLB Pipeline’s Padres prospect list. Cerro Gordo (population: 207, per the ‘20 Census) is also the home of right-hander Seth Frankoff, who pitched for the Padres during Spring Training last year. Frankoff, now with the D-backs, has another link to Gore. Frankoff's wife, Bess, is the younger sister of Fielding Hammond, Gore’s pitching coach at Whiteville High. And Hammond is married to Gore's older sister, Meredith, making him a brother-in-law to two different professional pitchers.

Cerro Gordo also boasts current Indians Minor Leaguer Trey Benton and former Giants and Orioles outfielder Donell Nixon. Gore’s alma mater of Whiteville featured 11 previous drafted players, including big league outfielder Pat Lennon and former Phillies righty Tommy Greene.

He became close friends with Luis Patino

It was mere months ago when it appeared that Gore and Patiño, a promising righty from Colombia, were two jewels of the Padres farm system and represented the next generation of San Diego pitching. Patiño is now a Tampa Bay Ray after the December trade that brought Blake Snell to San Diego, but he and Gore share a connection that dates back to their time together in the Rookie-level Arizona League in 2017.

“For me, Mac is a friend, my best friend here from America,” Patiño told MLB.com two years ago. I think this guy is amazing, professional, personal, he’s amazing. He talks with me a lot about baseball, about life.”

Though they came from different backgrounds and took different paths to the Majors (Gore signed out of North Carolina for $6.7 million, Patiño signed out of Colombia for $130,000), the two bridged any potential communication gap. Gore helped Patiño learn English and Patiño helped Gore learn some Spanish.

And the next time you watch Patiño pitch for Tampa Bay, check out his windup. Patiño didn’t enter professional baseball with a noticeable leg kick in his windup, but he adopted one after pitching alongside Gore.

“I talked to him about his mechanics and he said, ‘Hey you copied me,’” Patiño said of Gore. “I said, ‘No man. I do this because it feels good. I watched your mechanics, so I tried it and it feels good so now I do a leg kick, too.’”

Gore has inspired at least one high-stepping windup before he’s even thrown his first Major League pitch. Now that’s making a cool impact.