Nats Trade Gore for Five Rangers
Just yesterday, it was noted that one player from the Juan Soto trade had not yet made the majors. This afternoon, the Nats traded away MacKenzie Gore for five Rangers prospects – one of the key pickups from The Trade™.
Much will be made about who “won” the trade, but I’ll leave that to the yokels on talk radio (are there any other kind?). We’re here for the prospects.
Without further ado, here a quick look at the five:
Gavin Fien, SS
The 19-y.o. Fien was taken in the 1st Rd. (12th overall) last summer. He spent ten games with Low-A Hickory, posting a line of .220/.267/.341 in 45PA. His offensive skills and future projection as an above-average hitter with power enough to justify the expected move to third base.
Devin Fitz-Gerald, SS/2B
Drafted in 2024 (5th Rd.), Fitz-Gerald played at two levels in ’25, including 10 games at Low-A before suffering a (left) shoulder injury. Similar profile to Fien (and a year older), but with less power and less polish on defense, which could limit him to 2B.
Alejandro Rosario, RHP
It wouldn’t be a Nats trade without a pitcher having had Tommy John surgery, which will keep Rosario from pitching until next year after he was unable to rehab a torn ligament last year (yes, that means he hasn’t pitched since 2024). The just-turned-24-y.o. will be Rule 5 eligible after this season.
Yeremy Cabrera, OF
The 20-y.o. Cabrera had an OPS of .730 in his first full season at Low-A with 8HR and 52RBI. A plus defender with plus speed (43SBs) but a below-average arm, the question marks are his ability to make consistent contact – especially against lefthanded pitchers, who limited him to a .202/.329/.327 albeit in 59ABs.
Abimelec Ortiz, 1B
Ortiz will takes Gore’s spot on the 40-man, which he had earned this past November after splitting 2025 between AA and AAA and smacking 25 HRs between the two levels. At 5’10” and 230 lbs, he’s limited to 1B/DH (possibly FB) so it’s pretty clear that the Nats are looking for power from the left side and hoping the about-to-be-24-y.o. can supply it without the help of the favorable Southern and PCL ballparks.
clearly quantity over quality but that’s not to say there’s not some upside here. I had not picked the Rangers as a potential trade partner for Gore but I thinks it’s clear no other team was going to part with a top 25 prospect like Eldridge.
the only other option was to work on improving Gore and flipping him at the deadline but that comes with injury risks.
all eyes on CJ now. he could bring MLB ready pitching, the one thing missing from this deal
Here is a nice piece of coal to place on the winter fires
Devin Firz- Gerald coaches son like Willits .
As Artie Johnson always said on the comedy variety show
Laugh In
Very interesting
His dad groomed an old Nats farm hand
Jesus Luzardo .
Some interesting athletes added to the infield mix within the last few months plus last draft .
so slotting these fellows in to the system, Fein top 5, Fitz-Gerald top 10, Rosario top 15, Ortiz top 20, Cabrera HM.
???
It’s kind of crazy to me that role players, Jose Ferrer and Alex Call, combined, netted us a better return than Gore.
Looking at the return, it looks like Fien will slot in around #7 in our system.
MLB Pipeline, for example, rates him as a 50 FV, equal with Perales, Dickerson, Clemmey and Harmon (who by the way went 68 picks later and $2.3m cheaper in the same draft as Fien) #s 5-9
FanGraphs is one of the lowest on Fien, as a 40+ FV, which would place him around the teens on our list (2026 is still pending), but last year guys like Yoel Tejeda and Daniel Hernandez got 40+ FVs.
Rosario is a very weird one. He missed all of 2025 rehabbing to avoid surgery, which never healed and apparently STILL has not gotten surgery. He’ll miss 2+ consecutive seasons, and will return at age 25 to A+ ball. There’s real upside here (triple digit velo), but it looks like the Rangers’ tweaks to his delivery might’ve broken him.
Cabrera is a lottery ticket. He looked like he might have some serious pop in short season ball, but that’s dried up since he hit A ball. The scouting reports on Fitz-gerald seem more focused on his positive attitude rather than his actual skills.
MLB has all 4 of these guys as 45 FVs, which would place them around 10-18 in our system, on par with Ronny Cruz and Sean Paul Linan…
FG, though, has Ortiz as a 35+ (basically not a prospect), Cabrera as a 40, and Rosario as a 45+ (a rare more positive scouting report compared to MLB), so there’s some differences in perspective.
I’m really, really struggling to see the upside here. According to MLB Pipeline, we got Texas’ 2, 6, 12, 16 and 18, and MLB is the most optimistic on our haul. KLaw didn’t even rank Cabrera, Ortiz or Fitz-Gerald in his 2025 top 20 Rangers prospects list. FG is almost consistently lower on each prospect.
Maybe you guys were right that it’s better to wait for an overpay at the trade deadline!
I frequently gain insight from your posts but Swan & Linan > Fien, Rosario, Fitz-Gerald, Cabrera & Ortiz??? sorry but I can’t agree with that.
you site Law but his review of this deal gives favorable reviews of the players we received.
on further review I may have misread and you meant Ford, Swan & Linan. closer in value but I remain ok with the Gore deal.
Yes, that was what I meant by combined. In my opinion, Ferrer + Call Fien, Rosario, Fitz-gerald, Ortiz and Cabrera
Weird, it edited out some of the figures in my post, due to the greater and less than signs. It should read:
Ferrer+Call is less than Gore
Yet
Ford, Linan and Swan is greater than Fien, Rosario, Fitz-Gerald, Ortiz and Cabrera
Trades always play out over time . Look at in hockey his the Quebec Norduwues moved to Colorado and the Eric Londros trade over time was like a tree growing new off shooting roots .
Five baseball prospects over time could result in 7 players or several quality assets over time .
Plus Toboni and the young Turks may. Be better cultivators of solid young pitching we always see in AL Eaat orgs
Your thoughts presume that MLB Pipeline or Fangraphs are gospel. To some degree this is like when on-line “experts” evaluate transfer portal classes. I like seeing their thoughts, but its the decision-makers in the front office that matters.
Toboni and Kilbami obviously have different grades on Fien (who both analyzed/evaluated to a major degree as part of the 2025 MLB draft) than MLB Pipeline or Fangraphs or other services. Same with Fitz-Gerald and Rosario.
Could care less about winning the press conference and trading for prospects that have a high rating, but don’t pan-out. Let’s revisit this in two years and see where this class ranks, but if we are going to rely on MLB Pipeline or other media outlets to evaluate prospects, why even have a scouting department?
There is another Journey song which fits this rebuild / re brand of Nars identity .
Only the Young ( can say they’re free to fly away ..)
Here is where the ole salty ex – pi fans will chuckle to themselves saying : I’ve seen this in many re incarnations of starting over from square one .
1995 still recall throwing up in the toilet after the braves got Grissom. The first and Colorado got a real gift in Larry Walker .
Buck Rodger’s starting over with Murray Cook as GM after Andre Dawson hitch hiked off to the Cubs .
Toboni and his young Turks must prove that their philosophies and
Methods are as cutting edge as
Whitey Herxog , Trader Jack or Diamond Dave were in their career beginnings as player development minds .
Success for Toboni and the young
Turks will cast a light and energy which young players can be drawn to in future free agency years or trade propositions
Shane Mathews pitching philosophy’s may either resurrect some current prospects for team use or make for some interesting deals .
As the mystic might say
It’s Deja bu all over again . We’ve been here before . ( right , David Crosby ?)
Another Journey song which fits
Look into the future
Gasoer and Berrerrs might make fine player development coaching
Guys .
fwiw, Willits, Fien and King all make Keith Law’s top100
Some REALLY interesting tidbits in here.
1. Willits (53): not much of note here, there seems to be an extreme consensus around Willits’ profile. Only thing that stood out to me is that Law predicted he could develop to a 70 defender at SS. That’s new. And quite the claim. That’s like top 1-3 defensive SS in the game. I hope he’s right!
2. Fien coming in at 76 is alone a bold take. I still don’t understand Law’s take on Fien. He says he was the best HS hitter before the 2025 season, and then he kinda stunk in his senior HS year, and Law dropped him to the 4th best HS hitter (after Holliday, Willits, and Parker) and 12th overall. Fien then proceeds to play pretty poorly in a challenging (but no other choice due to stupid MILB restructuring) in A ball, looking pretty overmatched, putting up a 75 wRC+, and now after that Law is VERY high on him again. But Law doesn’t really explain why, except that he trusts him to undo everything he did in 2025, and revert to his 2024 performances. I’m not sure I buy it, but it’s never a bad thing to get some prospect helium.
3. King at 94. I dunno if this is a hotter take than Fien. Law once again damns the Nats coaches that pushed him to adopt a new swing. He seems to have discarded that approach in AFL with some sage advice from his teammates. Again, it’s the same logic to Fien’s write up, in that he trusts King to revert to his 2024 self after a very poor 2025. I hope so too! However, the most interesting point here was “The silver lining for Washington’s 2024 first-round pick was that he proved himself to be a plus-plus defender at shortstop”. Jonathan Mayo just wrote a few months ago about how King would have to move off SS soon, so this is quite surprising. Mayo’s take was quite out of the blue, but Law’s take that King is “plus-plus” is also different than the consensus (generally that King’s defense at SS is average to above average). Not sure what to make with such diverging scouting reports…
4. Who isn’t listed. No Susana. No Sykora. No Ford. I think this is the most surprising thing of all, and Law has some real takes… Not sure how you can really buy into King and not like Ford, especially when you compare their batting profiles. They’re the same age (Ford is actually 2 months older), while Ford put up a 125 wRC+ in AAA, while King put up a 78 wRC+ in AA in 2025.
But it’s always good to get different perspectives. There’s definitely a group-think tendency with prospecting. So I hope Law is onto something with some of these points.
Good evening.
Will… I’ve had the same connundrum on King’s defense. As evaluators seem to be all over the place. My perspective is that if Law is closer to reality on this (as well as baserunning), then the pressure is SLIGHTLY off for him to be a very strong hitter as some evaluators believed he could be.
On Cabrera… I’m somewhat hopeful, given that some latino players are slower to develop, as they sometime face a myriad of challenges while adjusting to the mainland US.
Definitely, LGOD. That scouting report from Jim Callis caught me off guard (sorry, mixed him up with MLB Pipeline’s other prominent prospect coverage guy, Mayo. See the article here if anyone missed the thread before: https://www.mlb.com/news/top-30-arizona-fall-league-prospects-2025 “King can do a little bit of everything, making regular contact while showing 15-homer power and the athleticism and arm strength to play all over the diamond. He hit .359/.468/.563 with six steals in 18 games, though he could get more out of his advanced bat-to-ball skills if he toned down his aggressive approach. Scouts don’t see him as more than an average shortstop and wonder how long the Nationals will keep him there.”)
It’s really hard to reconcile that with Law’s report that he’s “plus-plus”. There isn’t a perfect science to translating “plus-plus” to the 20-80 scale, but the general consensus is that “plus-plus” is the equivalent of a 70 tool grade, which again, is like the top 3/5 or so players in the game at any time (80 is reserved for historically good skills). I don’t understand how we can get ranges from having 40-level defense to 70-level defense…
It’s worth noting that Law will have seen King in person often when he was in Wilmington, so we should perhaps give his scouting reports more credence than others depending on 2nd hand information or watching tapes (though it should also be noted that Fien and Willits have yet to play in Wilmington). But Law is also infamous for his reactionary claims… This is something I want to see more of. Callis’ scouting report threw me for a loop, so Law’s counter-report in the complete opposite direction has me even more confused now.
But if King has elite defense, then there’s a pathway for him to be an incredibly valuable SS even with a mediocre bat, much like Andrelton Simmons. But if his defense is merely “okay”, then it’s a much narrower path.
Andry Lara, who was DFA’d last week, cleared waivers and has been outrighted to Triple-A Rochester
Glad we were able to keep him. I think there’s still some talent there, that I hope the new regime can tap into.