Braves ink speedster Terrance Gore to minor league deal

There’s always room for one more outfielder, it appears. At least in this case, it isn’t a major league deal or someone on the 40-man roster.

It doesn’t look like Terrance Gore is invited to Spring Training or anything, but he’s still a curiosity in a game full of them. Gore was drafted in the 20th round of the 2011 draft, and he has just one real baseball skill: speeeeeeeeeeeeeeed. To be very clear, Gore has amassed all of 77 PAs at the big league level, and he’s reached base 25 times in the process. Yet, he has 40 stolen bases! And was caught stealing nine times! He has five more stolen bases in the playoffs despite two postseason PAs. Basically: he fast. He could also probably play outfield fairly well, but that’s not why he’s here.

Notably, Gore isn’t necessarily the fleetest of foot in baseball — he had a sprint speed of 29.9 feet per second in 2019, which would’ve only ranked fifth in MLB in 2020. But, hey, top one percent is still plenty fast.

I do kind of wonder if this is a semi-cynical stash move as a way of getting some minor value from a competing team that really wants Gore for the playoffs in 2021. It’s probably not, but Gore has already been traded at midseason to playoff teams twice in his career, and in one of those cases, he was traded without getting a major league PA with his original team prior to the trade (in season, that is). Of course, both cases, what the Royals got in exchange for him was cash, so yeah, probably not.

But hey, maybe he’ll race The Freeze and that’ll be fun.