MacKenzie Gore is already pretty good, but can the Texas Rangers unlock his ace potential?

ARLINGTON — The Texas Rangers welcomed right-handed pitcher MacKenzie Gore to his new home field last week, and if the prospect capital they dealt for him or the multiple declarations of rotational strength weren’t enough, they’d like to remind everyone about the caliber of arm that was acquired.

“I think the current pitcher we have here is pretty dang good,” Rangers general manager Ross Fenstermaker said at Gore’s introductory news conference at Globe Life Field. “We’re excited for that.”

Minutes later, two seats to Fenstermaker’s right, the other half of the team’s public-facing brain trust added this.

“I really believe the best baseball is ahead of him,” Rangers president of baseball operations Chris Young said, “and it’s our job to help him reach that level and be as good as possibly be.”

Rangers

Both can be correct.

Gore, a 26-year-old right-hander, was an All-Star last season for the Washington Nationals and has exhibited stretches of brilliance in his young career. The 7.3 WAR he’s accumulated in the last three seasons, per FanGraphs, is the 39th-most among all starters leaguewide. Only right-hander Nathan Eovaldi, who’s totaled 8.3 WAR across the last three campaigns, has been more valuable in that stretch among Gore’s new teammates.

The raw numbers, like a career 4.19 ERA or 1.40 WHIP, do not necessarily the reflect the raw talent. The Rangers wouldn’t have shipped five high-caliber prospects to the Nationals if they believed his ability matched those metrics.

The Rangers also don’t think that Gore — a former third-overall draft choice, top-five prospect in baseball and the one-time centerpiece of the San Diego Padres’ acquisition of outfielder Juan Soto — is in any need of a seismic makeover or arsenal overhaul.

He has four pitches that generated better than a 35% swing-and-miss rate last season, which no current Texas starter can say, and a pair of off-speed pitches in his slider (which left-handed batters hit just .197 against) and changeup (which right-handed batters whiffed at nearly half of the time they swung) that allow him to be more effective against platoons. The Rangers may nudge Gore toward diversification, if anything, should he continue to rely heavily on his fastball and curveball.

The issue — or, more accurately, the last frontier that exists between Gore and the actualized version of himself — lies in sustainability. Gore owns a career 3.87 ERA in 367 1/3 total innings in the first halves of his four big league seasons, and in the months of March, April and May alone, he owns a career 2.93 ERA in 227 innings. The months of June (in which he has a career 4.68 ERA) and July (in which he has a career 7.56 ERA) are where the wheels have fallen off and ace-caliber seasons have crumbled into above-average bodies of work at best. His first-half splits and second-half splits are effectively the difference between a pitcher who should be in perennial All-Star consideration versus one that is a back-half of the rotation arm.

The club’s pitching gurus have already discussed the second-half regression with Gore in an effort to stay on top of the issue before the season begins and have identified potential mechanical tweaks that could prohibit his decline.

One fix may lie in his delivery. The exertive nature of how Gore throws could require more effort to replicate it in the second half of the year than it does in the first half once fatigue or wear-and-tear sets in, and when his delivery slips and drifts, his ability to hit his targets with the same ease he’d been accustomed to does too. This, if gone unchecked or unaccounted for, can lead to a lack of execution, less command in the strike zone and a higher walk rate because of it.

His Location+ rating — an advanced metric that measures a player’s ability to put a pitch in the right place in which 100 is considered league average — dropped from 103 through May 31 to 94 after June 1. Eovaldi, for reference, had a 104 rating, and the nine-point difference between Gore’s first two months and his final four was equidistant to the gap between right-hander Jacob deGrom’s (108) and Kumar Rocker’s (99) ability to locate last year.

It’s a complicated way to say that Gore wasn’t as fine-tuned and on-target once the last two-thirds of the season began. His basic first and second half splits (like a batting average against that rose by more than 50 percentage points and a walk rate that rose by 5 percentage points) can convey the same message.

“This is an age in which a lot of pitchers come into their own,” Young said. “MacKenzie has been a phenom in terms of the pedigree, and where he was drafted and his path to the big leagues. He’s still young in his career and our opinion.”

Young said that he hopes “our environment” can help Gore reach his full potential. That environment includes, among other things, a pitcher-friendly ballpark, a veteran staff with an eager-to-assist Eovaldi available in a quasi-coach role and a pitching department that has had recent success on the development front.

Right-handed pitcher Jack Leiter, a former top-five draft choice like Gore, underwent an extensive overhaul under the direction of pitching coach Jordan Tiegs three years ago and blossomed into a more-than-capable big league starter last season. The Rangers have identified players in the middle stages of the draft — like left-hander Jacob Latz (fifth round), Cody Bradford (sixth round) and right-hander Caden Scarborough (sixth round) — that’ve grown into legitimate rotation candidates or top prospects.

Gore’s background and pedigree suggests that he’s as or more naturally talented than any of them.

He just needs to do that for a full season to match the evaluation.

SportsDay Rangers Episode 25: The one with Ross Fenstermaker