Washington Nationals' Ace Still Has Room for Improvement In Key Area

It has been a few years since the Washington Nationals could claim to have a legitimate ace.

With the breakout performance from MacKenzie Gore this year, they may be able to make that claim again sooner rather than later.

It has been a fantastic season for Gore through his first nine starts. He has pitched to a 3.59 ERA across 52 2/3 innings with a Major League-leading 75 strikeouts and a career-best 113 ERA+. His 1.5 bWAR is only 0.4 off his career-best mark of 1.9 that he accrued over 27 starts in 2023, and his 75 strikeouts have him in rarified air.

While it has been a great year to this point, Gore is still just 26.

There is much more runway left for his development, but to put his name closer to the top of the list of aces in Major League Baseball, he must improve in one important metric; WHIP.

MacKenzie Gore Must Improve His WHIP To Be Elite

Gore enters Monday with a WHIP of 1.158 on the year, which is a good figure , just not great.

It is already a vast improvement in his career WHIP of 1.389, and over his performance in that metric over the last three years, which saw him finish above 1.400 in each.

WHIP is Walks plus Hits divided by Innings Pitched.

It keeps track of how many baserunners a pitcher allows, on average, in an inning.

For Gore this year, he allows an average of 1.16 baserunners per inning.

It is a strong mark, and there is no denying that. But it currently ranks 40th in MLB. While some pitchers can excel in this area over a small sample size, the best of the best are elite at keeping the bases empty, and the top of the leaderboard reflects that.

Nathan Eovaldi currently leads the way with a 0.754. Sixth through eighth is separated by just 0.015 with Max Fried leading that group (0.910), Zack Wheeler in the middle (0.914), and Bryan Woo sitting eighth (0.925).

What these four pitchers have in common is an average exit velocity allowed of sub-90 MPH. For Gore, it currently sits at 90.1 MPH, which is still good, but could be better.

The more hard-hit balls a pitcher allows, the more base hits they allow, eventually leading to more runs.

Gore is a fantastic pitcher who certainly has the makings of an ace. If he can better limit the number of runners he lets reach base, he could be one of the best in the sport.

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